Any small town

A Few Words

Renae Bottom

This is the kind of place where I could finish my novel.”

The man who said that to me had just moved to the small town where I grew up. We were standing together outside the high school gym, waiting for a basketball game to start. I was a teenager and he an adult. I thought it was an odd remark.

Looking back, I can see that he had a case of Idyllicalism, the romantic idea that rural towns are uniformly quiet, pastoral, innocent, hay-seedy kinds of places where sheep graze, cattle wander, farmers don overalls each morning, and Aunt Bea drops by on the regular with a fresh apple pie.

He was mistaken—I knew it, even then. First, about the novel. Nobody from my town had ever finished one, or I’d have known about it; therefore, living in my town had nothing to do with writing a book. Second, about small-town life. I had learned from eighth-grade English (Persuasion in Advertising) and high-school history (Societal Migration of Peoples) that humans behave like humans, no matter where they reside. Small towns were not bucolic meccas of wholesome living, and I had proof—some people didn’t even wave back when I met them on the highway. 

As I got older, I learned the concept of per capita statistics. I understood that my little town harbored a population exhibiting all the strengths and weaknesses common to the human condition, in relative proportion to Manhattan or Chicago. I also learned about the push and pull of negative and positive influences that could drive or lure populations this way and that, skewing per capita predictions.

I came to understand that people who pass through on their way to finishing a novel usually pass through rather quickly. I believe the man who spoke to me that day resided in my home town for less than a year. I sometimes wonder what became of him, and why his comment stays with me.  

On my journey through life, I’ve experienced my own set of push-and-pull factors. I’ve had the opportunity to travel and live in many different places, to meet and work with all kinds of people. Some of the best folks I’ve ever known, I met in places with a population of more than 11,000 people per square mile. Good people abound, in every location and circumstance.

And now, I’ve retired to the same small town where I grew up. I don’t suffer from Idyllicalism, but I do espouse a hearty loyalty for small-town life.

Scoffers would say that I simply returned to what I knew, fell for the lure of the familiar, the oldest predilection known to human nature. I can own that.  

I do like walking to the post office. Riding my bike to buy a few groceries. Recognizing the people I meet on an evening walk. Cheering for the hometown teams.

But I don’t buy into the idyllic belief that a rural lifestyle somehow preselects “better” people, or that it automatically instills behaviors that result in stronger families and tighter-knit communities, though research supports some of that.

I do observe that the transparency of small towns seems to foster goodness upon goodness, as people seek to emulate the best among them, even from previous generations, who have given and led with generosity and integrity.

Skeptics may claim that small-town people pitch in from a sense of social pressure, to avoid looking bad in front of their friends. I say that doesn’t explain the persistent kindness I’ve been shown in my home town. Remember, I still know people who don’t wave back. And I know quite a few individuals who chose to live in a small town, precisely because they don’t care what other people think.

 So, here I sit. I didn’t come to finish my novel. I came to finish my journey. In a small town. Among some of the best folks I’ve ever known.