[jyl]

My main experience with small towns is with my wife's hometown. Not a tiny hamlet like motion describes, but when she grew up it was a small, rural, agricultural town. Still a relatively small town, about 65K people now (was probably around 20-30K when she was a little girl). I've spent a lot of time there in the past 15 years.

These are some of the things I observe.

The education level is low. Very few kids go to college, even fewer to anything beyond the local community college.

The cultural level is low. Hollywood movies are about the highest level of art and culture there is. A couple of bar bands too. Occasionally a county fair. Want to see any art, a museum, decent music, non-first-run films - drive 200 miles.

Almost everybody's inbred. I don't mean biologically inbred, I mean most everyone is married to someone who grew up in the same small town or maybe the small town down the road.

World view - what world view? About 90% of the average person's world view revolves around local crop prices, last week's high school football game, and what store is opening or closing in the nearest strip mall. The 10% that includes broader economic and political events is exceedingly dim. Germany, Pakistan, the UK, China, Brazil, Saudi Arabia are all lumped together in a vague sort of "elsewhere" populated mostly by dark people.

You're not different, or you leave. The kids who are creative, ambitious, cleverest, different, etc are mostly desperate to escape and eventually do move to larger cities. The ones who stay are, for the most part, the average and below-average ones.

There's very little opportunity. The economy is not growing, the jobs available are limited and most quite low-end. If you're a legal secretary, you're really high up in the local job and earnings pyramid. Even military salaries look decent in this context.

There is plenty of alcoholism, unfaithfulness, divorce, crime, and other bad behaviour. And no shortage of poverty. It's not as in-your-face as a big city with all the street people and scary headlines, but it is not vastly better.

Don't get seriously ill there. Medical care is not as good as in a large city. Those who can afford it go to the nearest big city for major procedures.

There are plenty of positive things about small towns, of course. But are they really a better place to grow up than the big city? As far as I can see, not hardly.

P.S. Just read Tim's post. Maybe he's hit the nail on the head. Perhaps the particular town I'm talking about was a better place 40 years ago. (Although, even then, all the cleverest kids left as fast as they could.)