re: Was rural/ small town America ever nice?

quote:

---

perfect example of area that isn't really a suburb but survives off people owning homes from urban areas

---

Why not ?
My fiancé’s family owns a home there , it’s great!

We are just a lot further along on rural americas decay. Los Angeles isn’t near the place it was even 5 years ago.

quote:

---

Proximity to a large town so you can have antique stores etc helps

---

That's a really odd and random "benefit" to mention for larger towns

Independent that, I think we're seeing a shift back toward people moving to smaller cities and towns with the new work from home culture, and escaping the unrest, violence, and taxes/high cost of living of large cities. People can keep their good job but live in a place that provides the quality of life they're looking for.

quote:

---

the manufacturing jobs that supported those areas have mostly left

---

It was the death of the small family farm that killed off small town America. My mom grew up in a town of around 300 in southern Illinois (a VERY southern town). It really was Mayberry. We'd visit for a couple of weeks in the summer when I was a kid and I'd wander over to the gas station to read through the huge stack of comic books, then over to the town store run by my mom's best friend to get a 5 cent 16 oz. RC Cola. Cousins and I used to run around everywhere and get into some mischief, but everybody in the town knew who we were. Still had an outhouse for the first few years. My grandfather was the postmaster, and they grew enough food for their own use, kept chickens and a hog, hunted squirrels and fished for meat. It got them through the depression.

I think the population is under 50 now, the fire department burned down my grandmother's house years after she died, just for practice. Nobody wanted it at any price.

Nice? By today's standards it was poverty. But it there were some very positive aspects to it. Given the choice, though, I would not go back, even if that were possible.

I have an aunt that lived in rural northern Illinois when I was growing up. Closest larger town was Bloomington about an hour away. We went up there for a week or two every couple of years. One thing I remember from those visits is there being about 4 or 5 similar sized towns in that area, all about 10-15 minutes from each other, and each one offered something unique. Like, her town had the grocery store that everyone in those other towns came to. One town had a decent restaurant. One town had a community pool that residents of all the town could use.

I'd imagine that's not a unique situation across the country, but it's one thing that sticks in my memory from visiting her.