Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
I also realized that I may be the only real hick on this board
I mean really. Tell me about where you live. I was able to walk to my families Easter gathering yesterday and it got me thinking that I bet I was probably the only one from the board who could do that.
I live in a one street light town called affectionately The Burg or The Dirty. The Dirty comes from our FFA motto of "getting down and dirty in The Burg" that was just shortened to The Dirty and it stuck.
We have an independently owned pharmacy that the same pharmacist has owned for almost 30 years, and he knows what you need before you do and will call to remind you that you need more refills etc. We have a grocery that is always teetering on going out of business, a restaurant, one bar and a drive-thru. A "one stop" type gas station/sundries where there are benches and the old timers sit and drink coffee all day (not kidding). A library, post office, car dealership, and a grain elevator that does a heck of a business all the time.
One school that houses ALL grades K-12 that was just recently built and everything in our town centers around that.
And thats about it.
I was raised there and both my kids will have graduated from there as well.
Re: I also realized that I may be the only real hick on this board
I grew up in a place just slightly bigger than that (6-8 stoplights, a Wal-Mart, etc).
Since high school I have lived in cities and towns of 100k plus:).
Though we couldn't usually walk to family gatherings since my relatives lived on farms in the next county. My cousins did 4-wheel to Grandpa's house.
I never did participate in FFA though.
I grew up in a town like that, with a population of something like 950. The cool place to hang out was a drive-in diner, and they still have car hops and the best cherry vanilla soda known to man. Unfortunately, due to budget cuts, they want to get rid of our original K-12 school and divide them up between other school districts in the area. Sadness.
We currently live in a pretty small town but it's closer to a larger city, the population is only around 3000 but it's a tourist area and draws a lot of specialty shops, history and nature enthusiasts, restaurants, etc, so it seems a little bit larger than what it is. Our pharmacy is locally owned and has been in the same family for about 60 years, they also have an old school soda fountain and .10 candy. Yum!
I still don't consider myself a hick, but I love small towns.
copz - I think you described your town before, or at least enough that I was picturing exactly what you described. My aunt used to live in a town just like that when I was in Jr High and I loved visiting! We used to play a version of hide and seek with LITERALLY every kid in town in our general age range, and the game boundaries extended past the town limits. Lots of fun fun!
I'm curious - what's the substance abuse situation like? I've heard it's a real problem in small towns, especially among bored teens.
Anything you can achieve through hard work, you could also just buy.
copz - sound similar to my home town. 200 year old Catholic church built by the great-great grandfolks of people who still live there. Next door are 3 bars. We don't actually HAVE a street light. I worked at the independently owned pharmacy thru high school. The grocery store DID go out of business a few times. No library, no car dealership, but there was a post office. And lots and lots of farmland.
The only school in the town was a Catholic grade school (K-8). No public school - it was two towns over. High schools were 20 minutes away from where I lived.
It was Podunk, WI, USA.
*shrug*
food blog | garden blog | curly dogs blog
I grew up in Columbia, Maryland. It is the definition of fancy suburbia (and I hated it when I was growing up there). You couldn't walk anywhere, there was nothing to do at night, and my classmates grew up with rich people problems (cocaine addiction, for example).
I moved to Baltimore City when I was 20 and was much happier there. Lived downtown in a cute little apartment in an old brownstone in Mt. Vernon.
From there, moved to a small suburb in the South Bay. Hated it.
Now we live in the city limits of the state capital, about 5 miles north of downtown. We have a house with a yard and a garage, but we can also walk to the grocery store, errands (dry cleaning, for example), and local parks. I absolutely love it here, though public transportation would be a huge plus. We have buses, but no trains.
My brother is in Iowa, I'm in Ohio, our parents are in Maryland. The parents plan to move to a legit city once my brother and I settle down somewhere; they want to end up close to us. My parents grew up in Philly and Johnstown, PA, and have no plans to return, but also no real ties to Maryland, where they are now, since my brother and I are gone.
Copz, I think I'm kind of the opposite of you
My Lunch Blog
*nods at pixy* Same. Mom & dad still live there. My brother lives one town over (about 1 mile from where we grew up). Another brother lives in a similarly small town.
I moved south to a small-ish village. But nowhere near as tiny as the town I grew up in and within easier striking distance of MKE (and I work in MKE, so...).
food blog | garden blog | curly dogs blog
Locals that have made the news recently:
the man that shot his daughter's laptop and made a youtube video
the man that died from smoking a cigarette after accidentally drinking gasoline
this made me LOL, and probably shouldn't have
The house I grew up in is in a town that doesn't even have a stoplight, lol.
But, because of that, we spend a lot of time in the next town over (where my mom grew up). So way more driving and it's not as independent and self-sustaining. Like you have to leave to get to places.
MH's dream would be to live in rural area.
I could handle it as long as UPS would deliver to my house and I had internet.
I am in a small state that doesn't have mile marker exit numbers. We live in bedroom communities is about 15K.
I went to a different high school for the Agriscience program and was a FFA officer etc.
I'm not really "on" this board, but my hometown has 217 people there. I'm related to about half of them, if you go back far enough.
I live on a gravel road.
I have cows, including a big bull named Bill.
I went mushroom hunting yesterday.
My DH brought chickens into our home.
I'm feeling you.
ETA: I was a candidate for State FFA Office, and I wish I could tell you where I work!
My nephew is a freshman in high school and just placed 22 out of over 600 students at a judging contest...he is our up and comer in our FFA...we have a senior who is a national officer and places first consistently
*wears true hick proudly*
I grew up in a town with a population of less than 1,000 in northern Wisconsin. My high school graduating class totaled 36. There are no stop lights. I had all the same teachers as my father in high school. It sucked big twinkees.
I now live in the suburban sprawl known as the greater Tampa Bay area.
my read shelf:
FFA is such an amazing organization. I get chills when I think about the doors FFA opened for me! Good luck to your nephew!
:: flashes blue corduroy::
I grew up in a town like that, minus the street light, the pharmacy, the car dealer and the grain elevator. We didn't even have a gas station until I had left for college.
People use the school library for the library. My graduating class at the K-12 school had 16 people in it. People there are RED to the core.
Yes,I'm smiling...I'm a marathoner!
Bloggy McBloggerson
CO Nestie Award Winner-Prettiest Brain-Back to Back!
2011 Bests
5K-22:49 10K-47:38 Half Mary-1:51:50
2012 Race Report
1/1-New Year's 5K-22:11
2/11-Sweetheart Classic 4-mile-29:49
3/24-Coulee Chase 5K-21:40
5/6-Colorado Marathon-4:08:30
5/28-Bolder Boulder 10K
Bring your tractor to school day?
Sadly, no. One of the big feathers in my cap is that our membership drive my junior year of high school doubled our declined membership. There was talk about bringing it back, but we just never got there.
The school board chopped our agriculture program my senior year- so I was the end of the legacy. It was a HUGE deal, and I became quite the accomplished letter-to-the-editor-writer my senior year.
"Naked and Hungry" was our battle cry.
I grew up on a dairy farm, so you're not the only hick, copz! I can milk a cow, do hay & straw, pick stones, run a cultivator.....and I had a very, very old snowmobile. Some people would 4-wheel to highschool.
Now I live in a smaller town of 35,000 people. Its pretty conservative politically and socially. A lot of people who live here have rural backgrounds, though not all.
My town has only 1 stoplight (I think). I'm not sure where our town officially ends on all sides but I'm almost positive there isn't a stoplight, a grocery store, or anything really other than a church or two.
I hear ya
Well, I live about 6 hours by plane away from my parents and in-laws, so...
My grandmother lived on the same block her whole life, though. Her parents owned a bunch of property around her house, since it was "the country" back then, and most of it was planted with corn. My grandparents built a house next door on property given to them by my grandmother's parents in 1950. My grandmother's brother lived in the original house until he was in his late 70s, so his kids and my dad and aunt grew up next door to each other. My grandfather's family moved out to the "country" during the Depression when they lost their house, and settled literally less than 2 miles from my grandmother's house. My dad had a TON of cousins who went through the local school district before him - so his last name was familiar to teachers, which was not always a good thing!
That area, where my great-grandparents had corn, is now a suburb of over 100k people. In the early 60s my dad went to 3 different elementary schools as the town expanded so much and they built more and more.
My grandparents had 2 other lots they wanted to give to my aunt and my dad, but neither of them decided to stick around. My parents moved about 40 minutes away (to a more rural area) and my aunt ended up moving out of state.
My mom currently lives in a really cute, tiny village. It's kind of a seasonal resort town on Lake Ontario. She can walk to church, restaurants, the super tiny grocery/convenience store, and the K-12 school building.
I think I'm comfortable with certain aspects of life in both urban and rural areas. I prefer to live in an area with single family homes and at least small yards, but also close enough to have a community/neighbors, and to be able to walk to certain places, and have access to convenient things, like the stores I need and good restaurants.
40/112
My momma raised me "Midwestern" (her words) and my parents got divorced so all my upper middle class living was thwarted by that hot mess. I also loved horses and was in 4-H from 7 years old to about 19 so I was around a lot more hicks than my peers. I honestly had fantasies about staying at the State Fair ALL WEEK in one of those campers like all my chicken-farming friends.
#scrapple4life
"I believe in the future..."
I think I still remember most of it!