I was raised on the farm that my mother was born in the front room, doctor was coming down the lane but didn't make it in time, but no problem. Our telephone number was 3 longs and 2 shorts and we had 13 families on the line....the 13 families built and maintained the lines. You could tell how many were listening in by how strong/weak the signal was...and it was usually pretty weak! Went to one room school house through 8th grade, then the big city of 6,000 for high school, then Chicago for college and I never adapted :-) Built dams in the creek and shot the BB gun a lot, then the Marlin lever action. Great times! Drove the car through the town to the north farm when I was 12 and never thought much about it.


You Might Be From A Small Town If...
You can name everyone you graduated with.

You know what 4-H is.

You ever went to parties at a pasture, barn, or in the middle of a
dirt road.

Your idea of a FUN weekend was riding around parking lots because that was where EVERYBODY went. (actually it was the skating rink)

Your idea of an EXCITING weekend was watching a fight in the parking lot.

You swore at someone and your parents knew within the hour.

You ever went cow-tipping or snipe hunting.

School gets canceled for city, county, or state events.

You were never in the Homecoming parade.

You have ever gone home for Homecoming.

Everyone thought it was really cool to date someone from the
neighboring town.

You had senior skip day.

The whole school went to the same party after graduation.

You don't give directions by street names, but something more like,
"Turn right by Nelson's house, go two blocks east past Anderson's, and it's four houses left of the track field."

The country club golf course had only 9 holes. (Or there wasn't even one.)

You can't help but date a friend's ex-boyfriend/girlfriend.

You refer to anyone with a house newer than 1940 as the "rich
people".

The people in the city dress funny, then your town picks up on the
trend a few years later.

You bragged to your friends because you got pipes on your truck for your birthday.

Anyone you want can be found at either the Dairy Queen or the Feed Store.

You see at least one friend a week driving a tractor through town.

The football coach suggested that you haul hay for the summer to get stronger.

Directions are given using "the" stoplight as a reference.

The city council meets at the coffee shop.

Your "letter jacket" was worn after your 19th birthday.

You decide to walk somewhere for exercise and 5 people pull over and ask if you need a ride.

Your teachers call you by your older siblings' names.

Your teachers remember when they taught your parents.

The closest Taco Bell or Burger King is at least 30 miles away.
So is the closest shopping mall. (didn't have Taco Bells, Burger Kings or shopping malls anywhere).

It is normal to see an old man riding through town on a riding lawn
mower.

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DOK

Yeah, so whats wrong with that?

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Professional Thread Killer

Several fit, but the closest stoplight was about 20 miles away and opening day of deer season was a scheduled school holiday. Hadn't heard of Taco Bell, Dairy Queen, or Burger King. My mother and I had five of the same teachers and the handouts she had kept from one high school course were identical to the handouts the teacher gave me 30 years later (Who said teachers were overworked revising Lesson Plans?). The handouts were from biology and included a lengthy description of the mating of earthworms: "On a warm spring night after a warm spring rain, two earthworms crawl out of their burrows and lay themselves with their ventral sides together ......". (I'm not censoring, but have forgotten which somite aligns with which somite)

In case your biology course didn't cover it, earthworms are hermaphrodites with each worm being both male and female so the alignment is critical in mating so the eggs of both worms get fertilized (reciprocal fertilization).

Ah, yes!

The memories.........................

__________________
NRA Benefactor Member
NRA Certified Police Firearms Instructor
NRA Certified Range Safety Officer
NAHC Life Member

"Firearms only have two enemies - rust and politicans" author unknown

I remember how exciting it was when the first McDonald's went in...20 miles away...and we made a weekly trip to enjoy their great food!

Or, when the supermarket started staying open past 6PM.

You can go back 30 years later and the same family still lives in the same house.

The way it will always feel like home, no matter how long you've been gone.

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Ask me about QDMA.

Main street was 4 blocks long.

The stores stayed open until 8:00 PM on Friday nights because all the shoe factories got paid on Friday.

We did have a Dairy Queen, open from May until September. Two windows and no inside seating.

My home town has changed a lot in the 41 years since I graduated high school but it's still home. It's only gained 800 in population since then so it's still pretty small, 2500 folks. Good pos,fond memories.

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In general the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens and giving it to another class of citizens. Voltaire

There is no right way to do a wrong thing

NRA Benefactor, 2008

We would walk to town and pick up soft drink bottles along the way. We would trade the bottles in for a Nehi drink and a Plank cookie. Some times we would save up enough bottle money to buy a box of 22 ammo.

Young boys could be seen walking down the road with a rifle or shotgun over their shoulder and no one called the cops. The local deputy may stop and talk to you but would end up giving you some of his super police buckshot.

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A truely successful life is mostly based on how well you handle PLAN B.

The little place I grew up in had one general store and a saloon. If you couldn't get what you needed at those two places, then it was a twenty mile drive to the nearest town that would most likely have what you needed.

I fondly remember our two big treats..... ten cent movies and at the YMCA, putting a 5 cent bag of salted peanuts in the ten cent, 8 oz. bottle of coke. That was big time stuff if you had the money, which we frequently didn't.


Dan

__________________
DOK

Wow, you guys are all really old

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Professional Thread Killer

I do not regret growing old.
It is a privilege denied to many.

Even a blind mans perspective is changed by age.


I remember when coke machines changed from five cents to six cents. It was a real pain having to carry an extra penny.

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A truely successful life is mostly based on how well you handle PLAN B.

Yep. Turned 35 this year. All down hill from here.

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Professional Thread Killer

RC cola with peanuts in the bottle and a Moon Pie, eh, jodum?

__________________
NRA Benefactor Member
NRA Certified Police Firearms Instructor
NRA Certified Range Safety Officer
NAHC Life Member

"Firearms only have two enemies - rust and politicans" author unknown

Never cared much for the peanuts in a drink but could eat my weight in Moon Pies. On hot summer days, mom would fix a big pitcher of Koolaid and a box of Moon Pies for us boys. We would drink out of those tall colored metal glasses that sweated on everything.

And then on weekends, there was hand turned homemade ice cream. Brain freeze supreme.

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A truely successful life is mostly based on how well you handle PLAN B.

Darn but this brings back the memories. My town is so small it has "Welcome to Batchelor" on both sides of the sign. We shared the town drunk with the next town up the road. Goat

You must have come from a much larger town than me, we only had 4 families on our party line. It would have had to cover a very large are to get 13 families.

BTW, our ring was 2 longs and 1 short.

Our party line was rural only, the town had it's own fancy system, even had operators. Our 13 farms covered some thousands of acres, our farm being 460 acres.

__________________
DOK

My wife was on a party line when we were dating. You had to be careful about any lovie-dovie talk because you never knew who would pick up. My best friend was on a party line. When we went to college, he had a private line in his dorm room. He bought one of those new fangled answering machines for his line. When he came home for the summer, he put the answering machine on his home phone not thinking that it was a party line. Of course the machine answered every time the phone rang, even though it wasn't his ring. Boy, you talk about some upset neighbors. No matter who they called, the answering machine answered. He should of saved some of his messages for posterity....

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A truely successful life is mostly based on how well you handle PLAN B.

I didn't state it, but ours was rural as well. The closest town had a population of less than 100 people. I lived on the family farm of about 2000 acres.

There were 5 kids in my class 1-8th grade and 40 in my High School graduating class. The hometown near our farm only had a gradeschool. Had to travel 15 miles to go to High School in another town.

I grew up in the southeast corner of North Dakota.

As a child, we lived on the farm with a dirt road 16m to "town". Did the grocery shopping once a month. Bought 22RF bullets from the town barber at 25c for 50 and because only came in once a month, rationed them out at 12 per week.

We got milk from living cows and eggs from real chickens unlike today when the kids will quote their origins plastic bottles and cartons.

We spoke to our friends face to face and didn't abuse each other on facebook!

After 40 years in the big city, I bought 46acrs 10m from a small town to retire on and couldn't be happier