Small Town....

Small Town Texas here :

1. Crappy Internet
2. Friday Night Lights Ghost Towns
3. The smell of the rain
4. Country Road parties
5. Driving for an hour and not seeing another car
6. Small Town Festivals
7. Knowing everyone business and everyone knowing yours
8. Snakes are your friend
9. Dead Coyotes hanging from fence posts
10. The sky at night is inspirational txbbqdude

300/1500....

Small towns aren't one size fits all. There's a lot of difference. The town I'm from has 300ish people and hits every single negative stereotype imaginable. But an hour away there's a town of 1500 that is basically the poster child for good country living. I've also found they don't understand the physical toll working in certain trades can take. Also, driving an hour isn't considered a long trip where I'm from. moonglowrabbit

On the Roof. 

Turkeys roosted on the roof of my mom's house one night when my dad was away. She called me yelling "there's turkeys on the roof!!" I live 2 hours away- what do you want me to do about it? Put them on the phone for a talking to?

Another time in spring breeding season a Tom saw his reflection in the glass of the French door and attacked it, defending his territory, I guess. He broke the glass. They've regularly had turkeys and deer on their patio, and now coyotes have moved into the area, so you can hear them howling at night. snarkyB

Talk About Life....

I've been living in a busy street of Milan to move to Switzerland in a small town near the mountains. The silence in the night was something weird and actually annoying my first nights there.

So I'd say total silence around you at night.

Also nature smells : grass or animals for example

Oh and having actual animals in town like cows or horses.

Oh and... ok I'll stop there and let the others talk. cabrasm

The Wild.

Wildlife is wildlife... Don't call bylaw for: moose, coyotes, wolves, deer, skunk, raccoon etc.

Dogs bark. Your 4 lb chihuahua may not be loud but it's 100% more barking than my 80 lb husky mix.

When it snows, road will be plowed. It will NOT be a dry, black stretch of road but it WILL have less snow on it. Wolfie1531

Car Trouble. 

Its basically impossible to live if you can't drive, I live a few miles out of the village so I have to get lifts to work, to go see friends and everything. The only bus only leaves the village every 2-3 hours to go into the city and is ridiculously expensive.

But it is gorgeous and can be so peaceful, i often take my dog up the hill behind my house, there's no roads and only a couple of other houses and its so quiet and relaxing, i can lie there for ages on a nice day. I also have a horse and its great to go for a mental out-of-control gallop through the fields and the forests. CB97sriracha

Miniscule. 

How small it really is.

When I graduated in 2014, my class was 14 people. And we were one of the largest grades at the school, the grade below only had 6 people, the grade above me only had 4. I originally grew up in a hamlet, population 20 people and then moved to a village where I went to school, roughly 300 people.

We have one bar, one grocery store that closes at 6pm, a carwash, a bank (in the neighboring villager 15 minutes away) post office and school in town. Everyone else is either oilfield workers or farmers.

And it's damn boring, for fun in the summers we used to bike down the highway for hours to no where and then turn around and bike home. cats-and-cucumbers

Get Out.

Letting my kids just go outside and play. Ride their bikes down the street, go into the woods out back and explore. But more importantly just feel generally secure about their safety doing these things. cbinette84

The Laundry List. 

• How much you are at the mercy of the elements. (the wind seems stronger, the snow deeper, the driveway impossibly long and difficult to clear)
• How every project turns into multiple long trips to the hardware store (that is 35 minutes away, unless you have an emergency at 1am, and then you're heading 90 minutes away to the 24 hour store there).
• The value of consistently good internet connections
• How cool it is to cut down trees that are on your property. pageclot

Vote When?

How little politics affect your every day life when you aren't surrounded by people talking about it. If it weren't for social media (which I avoid 99% of the time) we'd have no idea what's going on out there.

Also, how quiet it is. I have city friends that love to come out just to listen to the quiet. techno-d

Honk First!

When you hear a car door slam in the middle of the night, something is wrong. 7e8e7

"who was that?"

Waving at people when you see them on the road. DeusVultEXE

My girlfriend: "who was that?" Me: "I don't know" Her: "So why did you wave?" Me: "why wouldn't I wave?"

She was not raised in the country and she found this custom so bizarre, that it took some convincing that I hadn't just made it up. Oh and the total lack of law enforcement and basically being able to do whatever you wanted as long as your neighbors didn't get too annoyed. ServingPapers

What Does the Fox Say?

The scream you hear in the middle of the night isn't a woman being murdered. It's just foxes shagging. BlameMeBlue

Ever hear a peacock?

Peacocks shriek just because. At least the foxes are shagging. thoughtIhadOne

BOOM. 

In the city, you ignore the sirens and listen for the gunshots. Out in the country you ignore the gunshots and listen for the sirens. CrazyNotion

Yup, gunshots in the country is probably just Joe and his buddies shooting targets for fun, or they killed an animal. Gunshots in the city means someone got shot. MazerRakam

My... Dear....

"Watch out for deer" when saying goodbye is another way of telling someone you love them. m1lk1e

On your own...

This doesn't go for all small town, but the one I live in there is no law enforcement. We fall under the jurisdiction of a neighboring town but it's like 45 minutes away. So the people out here just deal with incidents on their own. To be honest though, it's pretty rare that any instances occur. DesertChickBB

​The dark......

The dark. In a city at night you can read a book outside. In the country on a cloudy or no moon night. You can't see anything. Not like it's kinda hard to see, but it's so dark you might as well be blind; the stars and gravity are the only way to know which direction is up. Also a clear night sky in places that get truly dark like that is something my vocabulary can't describe. tinymonesters

Last Gas!!

When a road sign says Last Gas for however many kilometers....

It means it. yelofoley

Yeah we get so many people who drive through here asking if it really is the last gas station for miles, the answer is yes, some don't believe us and we see them again when they get towed to the mechanics across the street for running out of gas and ruining their engine by trying to make it to the next one, others do and they stock up and we never see them again.

I work at that gas station and its pretty interesting seeing just how many people pass through but don't realize they're in a town. Its like radiator springs from cars but in Ohio, we have pretty much everything we need besides a grocery store, but it's all run down and falling apart. Reddit

"run to the store"

The extent of our pantries and freezers. We can't just "run to the store" to pick up that forgotten ingredient or spur-of-the-moment craving. But if we're well-stocked, we can whip up just about anything! MrsChickenPam

WHAT ARE YOU?

We moved to the country from the city (really only like 20 minutes from a grocery store, but that's pretty rural for our tiny state). Our first summer here, we heard strange noises coming from the woods. Like a couple of idiots, we were standing outside with our smartphones on YouTube trying to identify what noise it was. Moose? Nope. Coyote? Nope. Deer? Maybe? I dunno. Bear? HOLYGODWHATISTHATABEARANALLIGATOR? Uncle_Baconn