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Could You Move to a Small Town

MaybeACoordinator

By MaybeACoordinator
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Couple of years ago I get a flat on a trailer outside of Justiceberg—between Post and Snyder—on the way to Lubbock. I hit the ditch to change it and have easy access to all my tools. No big deal. 

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I live in a tourist area, and by the end of the summer I will admit that I'm looking forward to them leaving.  But tourist dollars pay for everything in the Denali Borough.  The only tax levied here i

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I didn't have "welp, just let Republicans die" on the bingo card for today but here we are. People who can't find common ground and appreciation for people with differing political views are a hu

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CHIEF

CHIEF 5078

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Durango is also a college town, spent two years at Ft. Lewis there. Great town.

I've got to say Granbury is a pretty nice big town, it's a cross between Fredricksburg and Marble Falls. Quaint shops and fine dining down on the square in historic buildings, a ton of golf courses, lake running right through the middle. You can get a badass waterfront home with boat lift for under $250/sqft. You are 45 minutes from downtown Ft. Worth. My subdivision has 36 holes of golf, two air strips, a lively clubhouse. A lot of the residents are engineers that drive in to Carswell each day, we have a ton of airline pilots that just fly their personal planes to work most days. The town has good schools, decent restaurants, Ulta, Specs, and most important, an HEB (when its open).

CHIEF 

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MoJames

MoJames 8244

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Just now, CHIEF said:

Durango is also a college town, spent two years at Ft. Lewis there. Great town.

I've got to say Granbury is a pretty nice big town, it's a cross between Fredricksburg and Marble Falls. Quaint shops and fine dining down on the square in historic buildings, a ton of golf courses, lake running right through the middle. You can get a badass waterfront home with boat lift for under $250/sqft. You are 45 minutes from downtown Ft. Worth. My subdivision has 36 holes of golf, two air strips, a lively clubhouse. A lot of the residents are engineers that drive in to Carswell each day, we have a ton of airline pilots that just fly their personal planes to work most days. The town has good schools, decent restaurants, Ulta, Specs, and most important, an HEB (when its open).

CHIEF 

Parents are looking at purchasing a lakehouse there, sounds like a ton of permian basin retirees have relocated over there.

Was looking at the Medical community the other day and it appears there is a nice group of specialties represented.

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CHIEF

CHIEF 5078

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Just now, MoJames said:

Parents are looking at purchasing a lakehouse there, sounds like a ton of permian basin retirees have relocated over there.

Was looking at the Medical community the other day and it appears there is a nice group of specialties represented.

Yep, Midland/Odessa area is a big real estate market for us. Let me know if they need any help, I'm a realtor.

CHIEF

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Sandman

Sandman 3403

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My wife recently accepted a job in rural western Oklahoma, pop. 3000, so this hits close to home. The commute is 45 mins, so no need to move. I've talked to guy from the town once, he said they don't have any restaurants and have to drive into our town if they want to eat out. No thanks.

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RMac5

RMac5 1551

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On 1/3/2020 at 3:29 PM, MoJames said:

 

It's getting even worse with most Oil and Gas Companies moving out of town. Gonna be interesting what is left down there in about 10 years. Only decent thing about that area is Pinon Hills Golf Course, it's not great, but a fun public course.

Some incredible fly fishing at the Juan though.

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T’Boo Ted Marshall

T’Boo Ted Marshall 2732

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Durango is also a college town, spent two years at Ft. Lewis there. Great town.
I've got to say Granbury is a pretty nice big town, it's a cross between Fredricksburg and Marble Falls. Quaint shops and fine dining down on the square in historic buildings, a ton of golf courses, lake running right through the middle. You can get a badass waterfront home with boat lift for under $250/sqft. You are 45 minutes from downtown Ft. Worth. My subdivision has 36 holes of golf, two air strips, a lively clubhouse. A lot of the residents are engineers that drive in to Carswell each day, we have a ton of airline pilots that just fly their personal planes to work most days. The town has good schools, decent restaurants, Ulta, Specs, and most important, an HEB (when its open).
CHIEF 

You in Pecan?
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Junior Miller

Junior Miller 1502

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Would never live in a small town in Texas (unless South Padre Island course). Unless you consider where I live now in the outskirts of Melissa to be a small town even though I'm a 15 minute drive down 75 from Dallas. Feels like a small town but one that I can easily have every big city amenity open to me in a matter of minutes. 

If had to live in a small town somewhere around Colorado City would be preferable. 

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Hate

Hate 20106

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I live in Boerne, so my kids growing up thought they lived in a small town. Now that they’re in college, the wife and I want to move into SA. More for the money and etc!


I lived in Boerne during the 80’s when it was still a small town. There wasn’t a single chain restaurant or grocery store. It was kind of nice. The high school was still 3A.
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Errestaurants

Errestaurants 2570

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1 hour ago, Iceman said:

Quitaque has a Dollar General... far too metropolitan.

 

I'll give you a wooden nickel if you can tell me the mascot for Quitaque High without looking it up...( school closed in '72)

Pretty sure there is no Dollar General. Spent the last 2 nights there. Went to Allsups and Bison Cafe though. Wife's family has lived there since the late 60's, Cotton farm in White flat, turkey etc. Her Great Aunt retired from the Valley School.

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austingirl

austingirl 2191

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Disclaimer: I haven't read all 15 pages. I live in Austin proper now but grew up in southeast TX and have no desire to go back or move out of the city. I was born in Port Arthur and moved to Groves in 6th grade. I think PA is ~60k people and Groves is ~15k, so neither is super tiny in population, but SETX is so insular, culturally, that it feels much smaller than it is. Families have been there for generations and many people are happy to just keep the cycle going. It's rare for people to leave permanently, if they leave at all. There are good things about it, for sure, but I couldn't wait to get out of town. I never felt like I REALLY fit in there. 18 years was long enough.

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UpperWestside

UpperWestside 6161

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On 1/3/2020 at 12:03 PM, Al_4_ISU said:

Absolutely true.  It's definitely part of why I'm pretty content with a town of 4000.  Compared to what I grew up with, the level of services is available is off the charts.  We were 25 minutes from a town this size growing up.

I lived in a town with a population of 289. It was wild. I will never experience anything like it again unless I move back at some point, which I want to do. It was like living life 80 years ago, except there was satellite internet.

Edited by UpperWestside
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fattyflattie

fattyflattie 4639

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10 hours ago, Hate said:

 


I lived in Boerne during the 80’s when it was still a small town. There wasn’t a single chain restaurant or grocery store. It was kind of nice. The high school was still 3A.

 

Boerne was big city for me when I lived in Pipe Creek.  Loved it but had to move to Houston to make $$$, so, here we are. 

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Chopper

Chopper 17230

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14 minutes ago, StruggleBus said:

With all due respect, I don’t think you have the proper demeanor to live in a small town. 

Some people say a difficult thing about small town living is dealing with passive-aggressive, gossipy bitches. Thanks for the reminder.

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MaybeACoordinator

MaybeACoordinator 8349

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Somebody way up thread said a lot of small towns are shitty places to raise kids nowadays. I can see it in my own extended family. My grandfather's brother, on his way to a drink-induced early grave, took as his last wife a Highland Park Pi Phi and they moved to her folks old home town -- Bogada, Texas, in Red River County. There he knocked her up three times in short order, and then he drank his way out of that arrangement. His ex took up with a notorious local pot farmer and had another kid before he went to the big house. 

All the kids were girls, and today, only one of them is somewhat normal. She's a nurse in one of the nearby towns big enough to have a hospital. Her sister is a crazy cat lady and lives with their mom in a nice old house that reeks of cat piss. The other full sister is dying of cirrhosis and the half-sister is batshit crazy and into all kinds of shit. All of them except the crazy cat sister (who I think is a lesbian) popped out a mess of kids and almost all of them are living in trailers and dropping kids of their own all over the place. 

It's weird seeing a mirror image of your family and knowing that it likely would have been us had we grown up in that same place. Those four girls used to visit us in Houston a lot, and they used to be mirror image of my aunts, who could be my sisters, because our age gap is only five-12 years. Now if you put pics of the Bogada bunch next to my aunts, it looks like that photoshop series "If this Hollywood celebrity was from Oklahoma, this is what she would look like."

It's peaceful up there, and the nights are quiet and still. The terrain is pretty enough, and I liked it enough when I visited as a boy, as you can see from the pic of me and my "dead" cousin Morgan.

14680781_10155401873052942_4785385334378

On the other hand, that whole county is dying on the vine. Clarksville is the county seat, and it's one of the most withered courthouse towns east of 35. (My grandmother on the other side of the family was from there, but she hightailed it out of there around WW2 and never looked back.) There isn't much to do in that whole county but smoke meth and fuck.

 

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Iceman

Iceman 2693

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9 hours ago, Errestaurants said:

Pretty sure there is no Dollar General. Spent the last 2 nights there. Went to Allsups and Bison Cafe though. Wife's family has lived there since the late 60's, Cotton farm in White flat, turkey etc. Her Great Aunt retired from the Valley School.

you're right it doesn't.  Gotta go into Tulia or Floydada for that.

 

Quitaque High was the Panthers.  A mural is still on the side of the small grocery there.

ECXEpkSWkAINdA8.jpg

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Jkwellborn

Jkwellborn 6691

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Somebody way up thread said a lot of small towns are shitty places to raise kids nowadays. I can see it in my own extended family. My grandfather's brother, on his way to a drink-induced early grave, took as his last wife a Highland Park Pi Phi and they moved to her folks old home town -- Bogada, Texas, in Red River County. There he knocked her up three times in short order, and then he drank his way out of that arrangement. His ex took up with a notorious local pot farmer and had another kid before he went to the big house. 
All the kids were girls, and today, only one of them is somewhat normal. She's a nurse in one of the nearby towns big enough to have a hospital. Her sister is a crazy cat lady and lives with their mom in a nice old house that reeks of cat piss. The other full sister is dying of cirrhosis and the half-sister is batshit crazy and into all kinds of shit. All of them except the crazy cat sister (who I think is a lesbian) popped out a mess of kids and almost all of them are living in trailers and dropping kids of their own all over the place. 
It's weird seeing a mirror image of your family and knowing that it likely would have been us had we grown up in that same place. Those four girls used to visit us in Houston a lot, and they used to be mirror image of my aunts, who could be my sisters, because our age gap is only five-12 years. Now if you put pics of the Bogada bunch next to my aunts, it looks like that photoshop series "If this Hollywood celebrity was from Oklahoma, this is what she would look like."
It's peaceful up there, and the nights are quiet and still. The terrain is pretty enough, and I liked it enough when I visited as a boy, as you can see from the pic of me and my "dead" cousin Morgan.
14680781_10155401873052942_4785385334378413872_n.jpg?_nc_cat=101&_nc_ohc=q7ntTpesLRUAQn7SnXGiU0VdQ0r9W9RsPTqANv4dSkVbNuAsta1xdsN2Q&_nc_ht=scontent.fhou1-1.fna&oh=4876c2b1f5346a4a66a1ad80ce79478b&oe=5EA5DF49
On the other hand, that whole county is dying on the vine. Clarksville is the county seat, and it's one of the most withered courthouse towns east of 35. (My grandmother on the other side of the family was from there, but she hightailed it out of there around WW2 and never looked back.) There isn't much to do in that whole county but smoke meth and fuck.
 
I doubt it was the small town and more of the upbringing that fucked up your family.
Bogata

Yup. I’ve got a cousin that preaches up that way.
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austingirl

austingirl 2191

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One of my college roommates was from Clarksville. She grew up dirt poor with a really crappy home life (which, from what she said, was par for the course for almost everyone there) but ended up with a scholarship to UT and eventually got a PhD. Works in DC in some non-partisan transportation planning capacity now. Anywho, when she graduated with her bachelor's degree, her mom and two brothers, who still lived in Clarksville, stayed with us for a few days. We lost touch for a while and then a couple of years later she called me out of the blue with a crazy story. One of her brothers disappeared and her mom reported it to the police. Turns out that the two brothers who had stayed with us had gotten into a fight several days earlier and one stabbed the other to death. The killer's girlfriend helped him bury the body under their mom's trailer, where the murder happened. They left town, but I guess guilt finally got the best of him because he turned himself in and plead guilty and will spend the rest of his life in prison in Huntsville.

/csb

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chitwood

chitwood 155

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Grew up in Sheridan, Indiana, population around 2,000.  About 45 minutes to Indianapolis, but might as well be a different country.  Got out as soon as I could, and no way I could live there again.  Been in Austin since 1991.  I'm sure there are other small towns I could live in that would be awesome, but not that one.

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MaybeACoordinator

MaybeACoordinator 8349

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10 hours ago, austingirl said:

One of my college roommates was from Clarksville. She grew up dirt poor with a really crappy home life (which, from what she said, was par for the course for almost everyone there) but ended up with a scholarship to UT and eventually got a PhD. Works in DC in some non-partisan transportation planning capacity now. Anywho, when she graduated with her bachelor's degree, her mom and two brothers, who still lived in Clarksville, stayed with us for a few days. We lost touch for a while and then a couple of years later she called me out of the blue with a crazy story. One of her brothers disappeared and her mom reported it to the police. Turns out that the two brothers who had stayed with us had gotten into a fight several days earlier and one stabbed the other to death. The killer's girlfriend helped him bury the body under their mom's trailer, where the murder happened. They left town, but I guess guilt finally got the best of him because he turned himself in and plead guilty and will spend the rest of his life in prison in Huntsville.

/csb

Wow.

It's weird looking through pics of my ancestors there. It used to be a proud and prosperous little town. For whatever reason, it did not continue to grow like Paris, Bonham, Sherman, Denison, and Texarkana. It's peak population was 5,000 40 years ago and now it's about 3,000 and still shrinking. There is still a lot of pride there, especially around the Presbyterian church, which dates back to before the Tx Revolution. They were so far from Mexico they were able to ignore that pretend Catholicism Santa Anna tried to enforce.

Here's a little CSB -- I met one of my cousins on Facebook and was looking through her pics. She attends reunions at that church from time to time and one year she brought her boyfriend -- Bill Bradley, the former presidential candidate and basketball star. (He also has, or had, a very cool Sirius Radio talk show.)

On my last visit there a couple of years ago, either one of my cousins or somebody else I met up there told me that there was some Mr Big in town who has the clout to shoot down any outsiders who try to come there and create new jobs. He regards the town's entire labor force as his own to exploit and pay shit wages to as he sees fit. 

So the town just stagnates. One of the saddest things I saw was on the courthouse square. It really is a pretty one, one of the better in Texas, but in the coolest building on that square they have not an antique store, not a visitor center, not a restaurant or bar, but a payday loan spot. 

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Chopper

Chopper 17230

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The world's leading living expert on small towns is John Cougar. He was living in Bloomington, population 70k, at the time he wrote the song. Today it's 80k. He grew up in Seymour, population 18,000.

Quote

"I wanted to write a song that said, 'You don't have to live in New York or Los Angeles to live a full life or enjoy your life.' I was never one of those guys that grew up and thought, 'I need to get out of here.' It never dawned on me. I just valued having a family and staying close to friends."[

 

Edited by Chopper
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NotActuallyALonghorn

NotActuallyALonghorn 4975

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9 hours ago, MaybeACoordinator said:

Wow.

It's weird looking through pics of my ancestors there. It used to be a proud and prosperous little town. For whatever reason, it did not continue to grow like Paris, Bonham, Sherman, Denison, and Texarkana. It's peak population was 5,000 40 years ago and now it's about 3,000 and still shrinking. There is still a lot of pride there, especially around the Presbyterian church, which dates back to before the Tx Revolution. They were so far from Mexico they were able to ignore that pretend Catholicism Santa Anna tried to enforce.

Here's a little CSB -- I met one of my cousins on Facebook and was looking through her pics. She attends reunions at that church from time to time and one year she brought her boyfriend -- Bill Bradley, the former presidential candidate and basketball star. (He also has, or had, a very cool Sirius Radio talk show.)

On my last visit there a couple of years ago, either one of my cousins or somebody else I met up there told me that there was some Mr Big in town who has the clout to shoot down any outsiders who try to come there and create new jobs. He regards the town's entire labor force as his own to exploit and pay shit wages to as he sees fit. 

So the town just stagnates. One of the saddest things I saw was on the courthouse square. It really is a pretty one, one of the better in Texas, but in the coolest building on that square they have not an antique store, not a visitor center, not a restaurant or bar, but a payday loan spot. 

I wonder if it was something like happened to Marshall. Marshall was a prosperous town with lots of nice houses and booming business a while back, but they were too clannish and wouldn't let outsiders in. So now there are tons of really nice old homes that are falling apart there.

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Shoxthemonkey

Shoxthemonkey 1977

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2 hours ago, Iceman said:

70k people ain't a small town. It's a smaller city.  Hell anything's a 'small town' relative to NYC or LA.

When you know EVERYBODY in town, and they knew your parents and grandparents before you; then it's a small town.

All of the stores in our downtown locked their doors last Friday morning so that everybody could attend the funeral of a longtime resident. That's small town.

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