Whatever you do, rethink your decision to move to a small town, for most small towns are not idyllic, nor warm and fuzzy. Small towns are defined by absence, particular a lack of shopping. Maybe if the town is over 5,000, a Wal-Mart on the edge of town, a strip mall in which shoes and Hallmark cards can be bought, for everyone likes cards, right! Besides it’s the social niceties that position the newcomer.
Most small towns lack retail clothing stores, and some do not even have grocery stores. They might have feed stores and hardware stores for those last minute purchases. Convenience stores often exist on the edges of most, where for the price of an arm and a leg, one can obtain a gallon of milk that might expire the next day, cigarettes, and other sundry items.
Insurance salespersons, for sure; and most often a pharmacy and in some cases a clinic and a doctor, but I have found that if the town is less than 1000, a doctor is a precious commodity, perhaps only practicing once or twice a month, not a week. And his nurse? Your next door neighbor who gossips regularly. A restaurant? Maybe in a bowling alley or one of the local bars serves cardboard pizzas.
In a small town, only a trickle of carpenters, plumbers, electricians whose bills for services rendered make you gasp for breath–all the perks of a small town in the middle of nowhere. And a lot of regulations–permits for this and that issued by idealistic cabals who’ve been in the town longer than Moses and he descended from the mountain top a little before Christ.
But there are bars, numerous bars with hard liquor and beer. Fine wine? One has to travel on the other side of the state for that, you’re told, or order it from Amazon or Wine of the Month or Best Wines Online. There might be a movie theater in an edge of a strip mall or one downtown with the neon lights flashing bird shit on dirty amber lights. Never mind the pigeons, for the movie house has thread-bare velvet and mice.
Churches depend upon the original settlers, and what settlers usurped whom. Be careful in this area, for if you begin with one, leave that one, and go to another, you might become a pariah or an object of ridicule or concern.
Nor is the majority of those in a small town nice down-home folks. If you think that, perform an online search for sexual predators. Small towns protect their own deviants if they are descendants of power. More freedom, more privacy in a city of over 100,000 than in a town less than 15,000. And you can’t hide, no matter what. Yes, everybody eventually will know your name or at least where you live, unless they’re senile or wandering the streets in the middle of the afternoon. They will know what trappings you dragged along, your reputation at work, even the amount and kind of liquor you drink, the make and model of your car, what each of your children are capable of or not.
Small town people close ranks, not around the newcomer but around the themselves, no peeks into their intricacies of existence, much less the shadow persons who run the town. Seeking information about someone who lives down the block? Don’t ask the next door neighbor. All she gives is lineage and church affiliation, if she fails to divert the question and inquire about yourself.
One final consideration: Usually the only businesses open after 8 pm in a small town are the bars and convenience stores, so if you’re a night owl used to running for this and that, be prepared to swear the first couple of months at the inconvenience.
Small-town-itis 