One of the interesting things about watching the news and politicians in the United States is the way they eventually talk about “small town America.” In a lot of ways, “small town America” is part of American mythology: a story about America that this nation tells its citizens to make us feel connected to something that most people have no connection to. Beyond that myth, though, “small town America” is ignored; few people really know what it’s like to live there or understand the struggles folks in rural and small town communities face. Sure, we talk about it as nation every so often, but I’m not convinced that much of what goes on in national conversations has much applicability to everyday life in America.
I basically view our national talk about “small town America” the same way I view the same talk about “military families”: it’s mostly lip service designed to convince others that our politicians really care about these issues. But if you live in a small town in America, it’s pretty obvious that national policy (and, often, state policy) hasn’t done much to protect those small communities from corporate greed and abuse, the destruction of small business, the erosion of community arts and culture, or general decline (in population, in income, etc.).
While I don’t consider myself “an expert,” having only lived in small towns in a handful of states, I do have a lot of thoughts about what it’s like to live in a small town. I’ve watched two small towns get decimated by corporate greed as mega corps moved their chains into those areas, contributed little to the local community beyond a few jobs, and then became the only place most people could shop, further hindering future local businesses from thriving. Twice. In real time. These are communities that don’t have the benefit of size or support from a major university. Businesses lost in a matter of years, sometimes replaced by other vital businesses, sometimes leaving behind empty storefronts, and sometimes replaced by tourist traps that contribute very little to the local community (but, y’know, those knickknacks are great for tourists…). It’s not a fun thing to watch happen to your community.
For most of my life, I’ve lived in small towns. I grew up on the West Coast, mostly in Northern California with a multi-year stint in Northwest Washington and a briefer stint in Southern Oregon. Even when I didn’t live in what most would think of as a small town, those places weren’t all that big. The largest place I ever lived in was San Jose (1,000,000+ population), though I don’t have many memories of that time (and, yes, it’s obviously a very big city and not at all an example of the “not very big” places I just mentioned). The second largest places I have lived in fall in the “small city” category:
- Gainesville, FL (132,000+ population)
- Mountain View at Moffett Field Air (80,000+ population)
- Santa Cruz (64,000+)
Most of my “big town” or “small city” living has come in my post-high school years. I received my B.A. in Modern Literature from the University of California, Santa Cruz. When I lived in Springfield, Oregon (62,000+ population), it was in my transition from undergraduate to graduate studies; Gainesville, where I lived for 8 years, is home to the University of Florida, where I received my M.A. and Ph.D in English.
Otherwise, I’ve spent most of my life in small towns:
- Placerville, California (10,300+ population)(spent most of my life here)
- Oak Harbor, Washington (22,000+ population)(most of the 90s)
- Bemidji, Minnesota (15,000+ population)(the new place)
If you’re curious, here’s a Google Map to show the semi-weird geographical life I have led:
Having said all of that, here are some of my thoughts on life in small towns:
Small Town Culture
If you’re lucky enough to grow up in or spend time in a small town with a vibrant local culture, you know it’s a beautiful thing. True, most small towns have a fairly narrow cultural field. If you look at music alone, you’ll note that a lot of small towns gravitate towards a handful of musical types. Cities can afford more variety, but small towns stick to what works. Yet, when small towns thrive, those local cultures become hubs of culture. Did you know that the Sundance Film Festival takes place in a small town? Park City, Utah (7500+ population). And there are all kinds of festivals, events, traditions, etc. that make small towns quirky and delightful. Farm and food festivals. Art festivals. Music festivals. Annual bicycle marathons around a lake.
Here’s a little taste of the culture in the small towns I’ve lived in:
- Placerville, CA
A historical gold mining town that still wears its wild west past on its sleeve. I remember checking out the familiar mining haunts, hiking in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, marching in various parades with the high school marching band, enjoying the gorgeous art of Thomas Kinkade (the local art legend), etc. There were also church meetings, theater productions, a movie theater, bowling, quirky locals, and the great outdoors! - Oak Harbor, WA
An island town that is home to a naval base. I remember attending air shows full of jets and helicopters, throwing myself in the Puget Sound or the lake on the Island, checking out the gorgeous Deception Pass, hanging at the local game shop playing RPGs, taking trips to the WW2 fort, and so much more. Plus, they had a cool barn you could roller skate in! And marching bands! And live music! - Bemidji, MN
A small town in the middle of nowhere in Northern Minnesota. The university here used to be the centerpiece of the arts culture in town until retrenchment, which destroyed most of the arts and humanities here. Despite that, the town has a thriving tourist culture because it sits on a lake. It also has a theater, music festivals (typically bluegrass and folk), a brewery, open mic nights, and so on. It would be safe to say that music is the biggest cultural component year round here. Beyond that, you’ll find folks skiing and practicing their curling skills during winter (or all year round for the curling). I should also mention that Bemidji is near several American Indian reservations, which put on events for the general public; for me, this is great, because I value cultural exchange and interaction. We’ll come to the…problems…later.
There’s a lot more I could say about small town culture. The big thing to realize is that your big city probably has everything a small town has to offer, but there’s something deeply intimate about small towns. It’s like a pocket of a major city where most people know one another and the same folks show up to the same events across multiple cultural avenues. The same group of church friends might also randomly meet up at the music festival or the county fair. You’ll run into folks you met the other night on the corner the next day. Over time, those small encounters become an intimate history of the town’s inhabitants.
That intimacy is one of the things I love about small towns. Cities give the illusion of intimacy, but outside of pockets of activity, cities are really lonely places. Even a small city like Gainesville often left me feeling lonely even though I had friends all over the place. The expansiveness of cities, I’d argue, makes developing that level of cultural intimacy nearly impossible. That’s not to say that cities suck; in fact, I quite liked Gainesville. They’re just different and feed different needs. And that’s OK.
Small Town Economies
My experience of small town economies will be a tad biased. I’ve never lived in what I call a micro town where there is little to provide for the local community. Instead, I’ve spent most of my life in towns of at least 10,000 people in counties full of similar small towns within driving distance. Heck, until recently, I’ve never lived within more than 2 hours of a major city. When I lived in Placerville, there were at least two pet stores in El Dorado County with sizable reptile collections. Placerville itself had an exceptional bookstore within walking distance of my house, numerous thrift stores, access to other towns with other amenities, etc. And Placerville was basically 45 minutes to an hour from Sacramento, the State Capital. Meanwhile, Oak Harbor sits on an island and provides most of the things a nerd guy like me would want (books, comics, movies, stuff). Sadly, Bemidji lacks in this department; we have a comic shop and a games shop, but the one true bookstore we had closed down before I moved here.
But as I mentioned earlier, almost all of these small towns became victim to the corporate insurgency. I watched Walmart and similar corporations move (no, force their way) into town, set up shop, and completely decimate the local culture. My grandmother lost her downtown business in Placerville because she couldn’t possibly compete with Walmart’s prices. She’d been the one stop shop for sewing supplies and goods for decades. Other downtown shops also suffered, replacing goods meant for the community with fare meant for tourists. The same happened in Oak Harbor, and the same has happened in Bemidji (though we’re still kicking along). Remember that companies like Walmart contribute very little to the local culture unless they do so deliberately. Most of the profits go back to corporate, not back into the community in the form of more jobs or higher pay or donations to public services or, well, return in the form of more people being able to buy stuff in town. It’s basically a parasite that offers cheap goods in exchange for sucking the life out of the local economy.
And this is a problem I’ve watched happen over and over and over in small towns. Couple that with government reductions in funding for public arts programs and universities/colleges (which often fund public arts programs), and you end up with places that quickly begin to feel a bit…dead. Life will always be there, but it’ll always be lacking. Add to this the flight from rural America to the cities, and you can start to see why small towns really are suffering. It’s like sucking the marrow from a bone while the person is still alive.
And it hurts. Great small towns with vibrant local cultures and local economies are some of the best places on Earth. They’re beautiful and idyllic. They’re like dreams come to life. But when small businesses, the bedrock of small town America, struggle against corporate giants with nearly unlimited resources while states suck funding out of revitalizing these communities, it becomes inevitable that most small towns large enough to support a vibrant local culture will suffer and, in some cases, die. The micro towns are already basically disappearing, but I fear what will happen to places like Placerville or Oak Harbor if the ties that bind people there whither away.
Small Town Insularity
One thing that most people who move to a small town eventually figure out is that most small towns are incredibly insular. Bemidji, MN is a great example of this. Just recently, Beltrami County (Bemidji is the county seat) voted against allowing refugees in the area. Locally, this was a pretty big deal for anyone who actually likes refugees (or, y’know, wants to be nice to them; I don’t think people “like” refugees because we’d all prefer the world didn’t lead to people becoming refugees in the first place, but you get what I mean); outside of this little region, most people didn’t even know it had happened. The vote was met with cheers by a very old and very white group. You can guess what reasons they offered for pushing so passionately against refugee resettlement.
None of this is surprising to anyone who has spend a lot of time in a small town. In general, small towns are incredibly protective of their traditions and of their perceptions of their home. In the best case, this makes small towns difficult to penetrate for outsiders unless they spend enough time there and participate directly in the local culture. In the worst case, this breeds overt and brutal racism, bigotry, and xenophobia. Here are some I have witnessed directly in small towns:
- Racism and xenophobia against Mexicans. I contributed to this as a teenager right up until my idiot brain realized that you cannot go to work with Mexicans, eat actual Mexican food from the local taqueria, and pretend to have totally normal relationships with Mexican people while also thinking such horrible things about them. Fact is that you cannot pull the “well, they’re the good ones” card in any circumstance. Yet, anti-Mexican sentiment was rampant throughout my life in Placerville (and in much of California, actually). I never witnessed violence, but I’d hear the slurs from time to time (which I never used). There’s a reason I wasn’t surprised that a lot of the people I went to high school with ended up as hardcore Trump supporters.
- Bigotry against LGBT people. I watched a local church put up billboards and signs condemning gay men as sinners. Y’all know Fred Phelps. We didn’t have him in Placerville, but we had an offshoot of his horrific movement. That same church also encouraged neo-Nazis to show up to support their cause against the LGBT protesters. It was gross. This stuff happens in small towns a lot, but it tends to get drowned out by other iterations. (Well, maybe not the neo-Nazi thing; they’re showing up in cities doing their own thing.)
- Confederate flags. Even in places with absolutely no connection to the South. There’s a reason I never bought the line that the Confederate flag isn’t about racism.
Keep in mind that none of this is unique to small towns. Cities of all sizes have this stuff. I lived in Gainesville; you may remember that the man who tried to burn the Quran and hung a replica of Barack Obama (on a noose) outside of his church is from there. The problem with small town and insularity is their size. Few people in big cities think their cities are without racism, but big cities also have spaces where that stuff doesn’t happen (or happens far less); cities also often have a lot more pushback than small towns.
Bemidji is a great illustration of this. A lot of people in this town don’t want refugees. They’re afraid of all the usual racist dogwhistle suspects. When a good chunk of your town openly speaks like that, it’s hard to think the town as a whole isn’t in some way deeply poisoned. And let’s not forget the long history of anti-indigenous rhetoric in this area. I’ve literally had people tell me to my face that all American Indians are mean and hate all white people with a passion. My personal experience suggests otherwise (which is not to say that there isn’t indigenous animosity towards white people).
Keep in mind that I actually really like Bemidji. It’s a neat little town with a very close knit community. A lot of what hasn’t gone well for Bemidji isn’t its fault, and some of what hasn’t gone well is the consequence of insularity that will pass with time. It’s hard to remain totally insular in our heavily digital world. Not forever. And there is a university here, which means there is a constantly influx of “new blood” into the town. That is going to slowly change the culture and continue to help prop up the stuff that makes this community so lovely. At least, that’s my optimistic view.
COVID-19: Totally Inexpert Opinion
As of this writing, Bemidji State University, where I currently work, has suspended classes for a full week in preparations for remote learning. Minnesota doesn’t have many cases of known COVID-19 infections, but Minnesota also doesn’t have the testing apparatus in place to quickly find that out. Like much of America.
One benefit of living in a small town during a pandemic is the ease with which a lot of us can isolate ourselves from others. We can minimize contact with people, keep a distance, and even relegate ourselves to rural homes, etc.
One of the downsides of living in a small down during a pandemic is the fact that small towns usually skew older, in part because younger people typically leave for cities. Bemidji is a weird exception because we have a state university in town that skews the numbers. Still, I live within walking distance of several nursing homes, and I regularly see elderly and aging Minnesotans about town. If COVID-19 makes it up here and we are not effective at maintaining social distance, I worry about the impact it will have on our community. Loosing 400 or 500 people in a town of 15,000 would be devastating. And I don’t want to hear a goddamn word about “culling the elderly.” I probably don’t share political views with most of the elderly population in this community, but they are people with families and ties to the community. Their loss will be monumental.
While I’m not quite as worried as folks down in the Twin Cities, I am still a bit concerned that we won’t control this infection and it will have lasting and massive impacts on the Bemidji community.
Anywho. That’s my totally inexpert opinion on COVID-19 and small towns. Pay attention to the CDC, the WHO, and medical professionals. Their voices matter way more than mine.
Conclusion
Here’s the thing: none of this probably surprises you, especially if you’ve lived in a small town. And none of this is a suggestion that all small towns suck. Personally, I’m a fan of small towns and small cities. I like not having mountains of traffic on regular roads. I like the quiet and being close to nature. And, yeah, I even like small town quirks. They’re great places to live even if they come with a lot of warts. But I’m also a white guy. I’m the default demographic of most small towns even if I don’t share in the politics.
So that’s what I’ve got for now. If you live or lived in a small town, offer some of your thoughts on small town living in the comments!
And now for a collage of pretty pictures!
