How many out there were raised in ass-backwards, hick, grungy little towns?
I was born and raised in Yuba City, California, the armpit of the West Coast. The damn town sucked so much, it made dead last in a Rand-McNally survey of the best places to live in the US. This was the early to mid Eighties. Still sucks, last time I went there in '95; meth tweakers, cars up on blocks, rebel flags in pickup windows, that kind of shit. It looked like the stereotypeical imager that some people have of the deep south, only in California!!!
One of my home towns growing up (there were several) was Carmel, Indiana. Ass-backwards? Hick? Nope. Not even close–except maybe the ass-backwards part. Far from the po’ white trash stereotype, Carmel was more Ridiculously Super Snobby And “Rich.” (I put “rich” in quotation marks because, as with all things, it’s relative. For Indiana, it’s extremely well off–but it’s not going to give San Marino or Beverly Hills a run for the money.)
Carmel is a two-dimensional world, or at least it was when I lived there: You had money and flaunted it, or you didn’t. One group was in, the other was out. If you had money and didn’t flaunt it–well, you were out too. How bad was it? Here’s one example: When I was in junior high, the BIG thing was Gucci purses. I kid you not. Virtually all of the “cool” girls had them–12 year old girls walking around with $300 purses. I thought 1) the purses were ugly, and 2) it was ludicrous to spend that kind of money on a purse (I still feel that way). I remember once in my 8th grade sewing class, the teacher was having a casual conversation with the girls and asking why they had Gucci purses. One pointed to my little $7 black purse and said, “Well, because those cheap things don’t last.” Pissed, I said, “Hey, it’s lasted two years, and I paid for it. Can you say the same about your purse?” (My sister was much less independent about such things…when my parents refused to buy her one of these purses, she did indeed shell out her own money and paid $60 for a Gucci changepurse. :rolleyes: )
Junior high is difficult enough; going through it in that town was worse. Weird, weird people in a very narrow lifestyle. I wonder if it’s still that way…not that I care to go back and find out.
My hometown was so rinky-dink that there weren’t enough people in the county to have a high school. So I was bussed. I had two horrible experiances.
I grew up in North Hero, Vt. Year-round population: 200. The epitome of New England small town, where the people who belong in the town rule it, and the people who don’t belong in the town are damn well made aware that they don’t belong. As the daugher of two New Yorkers (aka: Flatlanders) I had one strike against me. Then I was smart. Two strikes. I liked art, and theater, and music that wasn’t pop or country. Strike, strike, strike. The adults were inbred morons, the children were viscious little monsters. They took great joy in surrounding me on the bus and taunting me until I was in tears.
Needless to say, I was happy to graduate. I went to high school in South Burlington, Vt. One of the most affluent non-ski areas in the state. Talk about culture shock. Now, instead of being TOO cultured, I was from “the islands” (Champlain, not tropical) and was therefore one of the people I had grown up hating. Teachers were patronizing, kids whose parents bought them Jeep Grand Cherokees on their 16th birthday were classists. Luckily, I found theater, and got connected to other artsy kids in the state through a state funded arts program, which saved me a number of times over.
I still can’t stand to go back to my old elementary school (my younger sister graduated last year, so I used to go back all the time). And now that she’s going to my old high school, I have to go back a lot. Argh. Small town livin’ sucks.
But it wasn’t good. Small town in Nebraska, not very progressive, not very diverse, high school dynamics were as ugly as anywhere else. I knew college could open my horizons so I considered colleges on both coasts. My college counselor said “I want you to know that I don’t think those schools are any better than the schools right here in Nebraska.” Whatever, thanks for the guidance, toots.
We had a multi-term mayor in office no matter how many people voted against him. He finally left office the day he surrendered to begin serving his prison sentence for extortion. It was a suburb of Chicago - what a surprise.
Rinky Dink Central New York town, about 1000 people.
86 kids in my graduating class. It was the late 1980s.
My sister was having trouble deciding which college
to enroll in (she’d been accepted to several) and asked
the guidance counselor’s advice. He recommended she apply to a secretarial school instead of going to a 4-year school. She ignored him and chose Yale.
Merrimack, NH. Not as small as North Hero VT, but just as small-minded. Being a smaht little weasel certainly put me on the wrong side of the Law that is Middle School Society. I don’t remember a year I didn’t get picked on by somebody.
Certainly wasn’t a whole lot of interesting stuff on offer either - would have been nicer to live closer to Boston. Summers were a veritable carousel of boredom - same kids on the street year after year, goofing off at the beach we had (grew up on an oxbow island), going off to the local soft-serve ice cream stand for a $1 foot-tall cone, watching cartoons and Li’l’ Rascals reruns until about an hour before the folks got home, then rush around doing the chores. Not that this was a bad thing in and of itself, just the same thing every summer. It’s a small wonder my brain didn’t atrophy completely. Shoulda gone to the library, such as it was, more often.
Wow, Olentzero, I grew up in Hudson, NH. Pretty much the same experience as him. Had a pretty good experience outside of school, but middle school was largely a miserable time. I don’t remember a time in 7th or 8th grade that I wasn’t being picked on for one reason or another. But on the whole I can’t complain. By high School everything was pretty cool. Well, as cool as a white-bread, bland southern New Hampshire town can get.
Well, I wouldn’t say I came from a hick town, although it had definite hick tendencies. For me, the problem is more that it has a reputation that I get to live with.
“Where are you from?” Fellow American asks me in a cheery voice. I answer. “You mean, like, Witness???” FA squeals in excitement.
Yes. Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The one and only. No, I am not Amish. Do I look Amish? Even remotely? When I wear black, I look a hell of a lot better than that. And incidentally, I’ve never seen That Movie.
My solution to the problem may have been a bit drastic, of course. I moved to Norway.
I grew up in Riceville, IA, AKA, my own personal hell. I’m sure many of you are familiar with the sort of town this is, agricultural community, sports (well, football and wrestling anyway) are everything, horribly underfunded arts programs that have the most wretched, hick teachers in charge. (For the most part, anyway. There have been a couple exceptions.)
There is a large cement thingy with “Riceville” carved on it as you’re driving into town, which looks exactly like a headstone. I fine this mildly amusing and quite fitting, because this town is totally and completely, flesh dropping off it’s bones, stinky dead. The class of 2000 was one of the biggest classes ever, and it had around 70 students. Mine had 36. The elementary, junior high, and high school were all in one building. Honestly, I don’t understand how anyone can stomach living in that place. It’s a miracle I’m sane. Well, as sane as I am, anyway, there are few who would call me completely sane.
Edmeston NY
Graduated in 1987 with about 35 others. I was one of three students in my physics class. Put our school down as one building for all as well.
Last time I looked population was somewhere around 800.
No traffic light, just three stop signs.
I’m still here with only slight amounts of psychological scaring.
Beattyville, Kentucky. (Or, as I affectionately know it, Lower Pigshit.) Population of 1300, although there are 7000 in the county. Home of the Woolly Worm Festival. It has neither a McDonalds or a Wal-Mart, a distinction shared by very few county seats in our fine state. (For some reason, they consider this a bad thing.)
Our biggest claim to fame is that it was in our town that Woody Harrelson (sp?) planted four hemp seeds and was arrested in an attempt to challenge the laws against industrial hemp in KY. That was about a mile from my house. You can imagine my surprise when I got the Herald-Leader the next day and on the cover was a picture of Woody being handcuffed by Junior Kilburn. (Yes, our sherriff was named “Junior”.) I was proud. The high school band was having a car wash outside the courthouse when he was brought in; on his way out, he wrote a $150 check and dropped it in their box. Nice guy, by all accounts. The case is still pending.
Our only other claim to fame is that our local newspaper man, Mac Kilduff, was Kennedy’s associate press secretary or something like that. He was the one who made the announcement when JFK was killed. I think he was two cars back in the motorcade.
It wasn’t a bad place to grow up, but I don’t ever plan on living there again.
I grew up in Peterborough, Ontario, Canada. My elementary school was full of yuppie kids with parents who wore Eddie Bauer and pretended to be liberal while making “fag” jokes over cigarettes on the playground. shudder I was tormented for a year in grade five, then skipped ahead to grade seven at a nearby high school. It was even worse there. All my “friends” in grade six hated me for skipping ahead and no one at the middle school liked me or accepted me. They used to throw rocks at my head. When I reported them to the principal, he told me it was my own fault for not fitting in and being a freak.
I had the nutty idea that when grownups and Raffi and teachers told us to be ourselves and not follow the crowd, they meant it. Little did I know it was just lip service.
I dropped out of French immersion and transferred to the school in my hick town of Lakefield, where I had moved just after grade three. I kept to myself. I had learned the ropes by then. People still taunted me endlessly but at least it was only the people in my class, and not the entire middle school.
High school was what kept me from slashing my wrists. I was one of 52 students selected out of 500 applicants to attend an Arts program there. The people I met there were only minimally hypocritical, and they really did accept people and judged people by their abilities and their integrity of character. It restored my faith in humanity. I made friends there who changed my life.
Sweet Lotus, that sounds sorta familiar. I was never going to be fully socially accepted because I was too smart.
My parents sent me to CO to a gifted-kid camp when I was 14 and again when I was 15. That changed my life. It was only 10 days each time, but 10 days of being appreciated and liked for being smart (instead of in spite of it)–heck, I was even popular with guys!!–was enough to draw on to get through the crappy times in high school.
Hmmm, I was born in a suburb called Euclid, Ohio.
We lived in a 2 bedroom house that was in a neighborhood built for returning war veterans. It was called the projects, but was hardly dangerous. We never even locked the doors during the daytime.
My parents payed $90 a month!(this was 1960-70)
It was not bad, but as an aspiring hippie, it sorely lacked Any excitement or interesting people.
Roggen, Colorado. Not really a bad town, but I don’t want to talk about the high school. Let’s just say it was bad when my mom was a student and it was worse when I went. It didn’t help that I was overweight, hated football, and was smart. . .
– Sylence
I grew up in northern California. When we moved away from San Jose, it was still a little town you could write songs about, so it doesn’t count. I was five.
When I was Six, we lived in Chico, Ca., and it hadn’t become “interesting” yet. Now (or so I’m lead to believe) it’s the home of one of the most ludicrous local ordinances I can think of. It’s a misdemeanor to detonate a nuclear device within city limits. I can just imagine the terrorists planning their next move:
[ul]Terrorist 1: “Okay, Alphonse, we have the bomb. What’s our next target?”
Alphonse (portrayed by terrorist 2): “Chico!”
Terrorist 3: “Chico?!? Are you nuts or something? It’s illegal to set one of those off there! There’s a hundred dollar fine and everything!”
Terrorist 1: “Damn! We spent our last dollar buying matching berets, too! Alphonse?”
Alphonse: “Okay. How about San Francisco?”[/ul]
Next we moved to Mineral, CA. It used to be a…
[Civil Defense Sirens are sounding – maybe a tornado. Gotta go!]