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DROVER---yes, I can see where mice would be a problem....? is---I wonder how far AWAY anyone would need to be from a cornfield to eliminate this problem....If you live in St. Joe, but NOT near one?
It's 10 minutes to C-U from most of those areas. It is also very easy to get around C-U so most just drive there. Most of those small towns have plenty of extracurricular activities, even in the summer....especially if he is involved in sports.
What did most kids do when I was there 10 years ago.....well drugs weren't a big problem....however, there is no shortage of easily obtainable alcohol and huge parties in the area.
As far as allergies....I have found that people who didn't grow up in a similar area with corn, farming, and soy beans, have little allergy problems (typically)....and people who did grow up in the area often have horrible allergies.
There are always allergy shots
Yeah, I have had allergy shots in the past, not so fun...
Many stereotype small towns as a place for trouble due to lack of activities. We are not from a large area ourselves...so it should not be that big of a deal. THANKS!
However where there are mice, there are cats who are mousers. Get yourself a mouser. We have one that gives us "presents" daily. My allergies actually got better when I moved to the country, in the city they were severe. I am guessing because of the pollution.
Spouse grew up in an area like that, if I remember correctly, they spent a lot of time driving back and forth to the mall.
I do know in some rural areas, meth is (still?) is a problem to watch. Bored kids can get caught up in that.
I am wondering what teenagers have to do in small towns? My son will be 15 when we move. Due to the lack of things to do in the town--no jobs or recreation, is this a problem? We will be moving to a small town--- Philo, St. Joseph, Mahomet, Sidney, Tolono shortly. Do kids just drive into Champaign/Urbana alot?
ALSO, any info. on the above towns would be helpful!
One last ?---if your house (backyard) is on a cornfield or soybean field is there alot of allergies with this? Is there alot of dust/dirt or bugs assoc. with this?
ANY HELP WOULD BE APPRECIATED!!!
drugs with teens is always an issue when there is lack of entertainment to be had. If one is not into the outdoors lifestlye small towns can seem kind of boring.
Yeah, my wife grew up in St. Joe (one of the towns the OP is considering). She had a pretty rough adolescence, at least until she got a car. Then she did all the same stuff other teenagers do, only they did much it in Chambana instead of their own town.
I am wondering what teenagers have to do in small towns? My son will be 15 when we move. Due to the lack of things to do in the town--no jobs or recreation, is this a problem? We will be moving to a small town--- Philo, St. Joseph, Mahomet, Sidney, Tolono shortly. Do kids just drive into Champaign/Urbana alot?
ALSO, any info. on the above towns would be helpful!
One last ?---if your house (backyard) is on a cornfield or soybean field is there alot of allergies with this? Is there alot of dust/dirt or bugs assoc. with this?
ANY HELP WOULD BE APPRECIATED!!!
I grew up in rural Illinois, on a farm about three miles from a village of 300 with no services or amenities, and about six miles from a town of 7,000, which we referred to as "Town," as in, "I'm going into town, anybody need anything?" We also went to school in "Town." Our high school was consolidated from student bodies of various surrounding tiny communities' schools that had closed due to low enrollment. The entire enrollment of the high school was around 600 at the time.
As a teen, this was my experience:
Social gatherings - these mainly centered on high school activities...sporting events, mostly, but also a high percentage of fine arts activities, as the music instructors were kind of powerhouses for a school that size. Kids would typically go to x event or practice at the high school, and afterward, ride around town if they were of driving age, and/or wind up at local all-night greasy spoon diner (place was packed after every home game or concert or play). My siblings and I were really active in extracurriculars, as were most kids. That gave us plenty to do (as well as the incentive to keep our noses clean, for eligibility). For kids who don't do/have interest in any extracurriculars, I can see how life would get boring fast, but we were never bored.
Generally, there was a lot of drinking as recreation, and, in various generations, a lot of pot smoking (it kind of skipped my era, where booze was the substance of choice, but my aunt's generation (high school in the 70s) and my sister's generation (high school in the 2000's) saw a lot more than I was aware of when I was there in the 90s). Meth is on the rise as in most rural areas, but at this point, it's not yet really got a popular foodhold in the high school crowd, it's more confined to the trashier adult population (although some of them have high school aged kids, so there are def. high schoolers who are into it, I'd imagine). According to my younger sister, though, mostly the kids still mainly focus on drinking and some on smoking up. Not everyone does it, though...in my crowd, substance abuse/use wasn't really popular...a few might have smoked cigarettes, but that was about it.
Because the size of the town was so small, every one knew everyone and it was impossible to get served in bars underage, and hard to have a big beer bash without it getting busted by somebody, but they did happen. Rural area, lots of farms and backroads. Because it was always deemed to be FAR more fun to go and drive around some other virtually identical, small neighboring town, because your own is "so boring," and meet other, new kids who are essentially just like the ones in your town, there was a lot of driving 10,15,20 miles up and down country stretches of highway, and consequently, lots of accidents, and a high number of fatalities. Some were alcohol-related, some not. But when you've got that many idiot kids screaming around the countryside at typically unsafe speeds and not paying the utmost attention to the road or their driving, you'll have that. My urban peers in college and after were amazed at the percentage of auto accident fatalities among my high school classmates, but they didn't live in worlds where you had to drive miles and miles and miles in order to get to anything for socialization or recreation. Bigger opportunity for tragedy.
Mostly, we just "hung out." There were no movie theatres or malls (closest ones were 15 miles away, which was cool if your mom could drive you before you had a license, and fine one you were driving). We spent a lot of time just hanging out at people's houses. My house was popular, because it was out in the country, big yard, room for bonfires, parents were nice and stayed up late and weren't bothered by kids there late, and it was popular with other parents as a hang-out place, because it was supervised, and because we were good kids.
Job-wise: Fast food restaurants, pizza delivery, grocery store bagger and stocker were pretty much it. There wasn't a lot of retail (due to malls/big box stores 15 miles away), and what little there was (hardware store, drug store) was generally staffed by adults who held onto the jobs for years and years, the positions didn't open up for high schoolers often. There were a few jobs like data entry/file clerk stuff at insurance agents and at our small community hospital, if you knew somebody who'd hold the job for you. Seasonal jobs, like counselor/activities leader for kiddie day camps, lifeguard at the swimming pool, little league coach, etc. were often available, but the same kids tended to get those held for them, too. A lot of us girls babysat. The bulk of my small income in high school came from watching other peoples' kids. There were seasonal agricultural industry jobs, like detassling and deroguing in corn and bean fields, most of the rural kids did those at least a few summers, few of the town kids did.
Allergies/being surrounded by agriculture: I was never a big allergy sufferer and was never bothered by the cropland that surrounded our towns and my house. My understanding is that corn pollen is fairly large, by pollen standards, and less likely be inhaled/cause problems than many other common allergens. My brothers both suffered hay fever seasonally, and having a big chunk of cattle-grazing meadowland adjacent to our property was a bit aggravating for that, since it had a good deal of goldenrod and ragweed in season, and so do the country ditches.
Mice were always a minor issue at the first cold snap after the corn was harvested. The mice would come running to the first warm food source after the corn came down. A few weeks, a few traps, and problem over, though. We never had indoor cats, my dad couldn't abide them. But spring traps worked fine.
Bugs were not an issue. Bats in the barn took care of mosquitoes and many others. Corn borer moths will go splat on your windshield, though, when you drive up and down roads lined by cornfields in growing season. Lots of windshield washing.
Pesticide/runoff is a hot button issue...my area has been part of a decades long study on the relatively high incidence of MS and Parkinson's and certain cancers in the area, and attempts are being made to tie it to farming chemicals and possible groundwater contamination. But nothing conclusive at this point, over the decades. We're also not incredibly far away from a series of nuke plants and are adjacent to a few EPA superfund sites that have nothing to do with farming, so there are lots of possibilities on that front.
Dirt - I grew up on a gravel road, so lots of dust in the air. Also being surrounded by fields in varying states of cultivation, not only did road dust make its way into the house via the air, but actual black, topsoil dirt, too. My mom has always complained about the greater amount of cleaning that needs to be done.
I grew up in rural Illinois, on a farm about three miles from a village of 300 with no services or amenities, and about six miles from a town of 7,000, which we referred to as "Town," as in, "I'm going into town, anybody need anything?" We also went to school in "Town." Our high school was consolidated from student bodies of various surrounding tiny communities' schools that had closed due to low enrollment. The entire enrollment of the high school was around 600 at the time.
As a teen, this was my experience:
Social gatherings - these mainly centered on high school activities...sporting events, mostly, but also a high percentage of fine arts activities, as the music instructors were kind of powerhouses for a school that size. Kids would typically go to x event or practice at the high school, and afterward, ride around town if they were of driving age, and/or wind up at local all-night greasy spoon diner (place was packed after every home game or concert or play). My siblings and I were really active in extracurriculars, as were most kids. That gave us plenty to do (as well as the incentive to keep our noses clean, for eligibility). For kids who don't do/have interest in any extracurriculars, I can see how life would get boring fast, but we were never bored.
Generally, there was a lot of drinking as recreation, and, in various generations, a lot of pot smoking (it kind of skipped my era, where booze was the substance of choice, but my aunt's generation (high school in the 70s) and my sister's generation (high school in the 2000's) saw a lot more than I was aware of when I was there in the 90s). Meth is on the rise as in most rural areas, but at this point, it's not yet really got a popular foodhold in the high school crowd, it's more confined to the trashier adult population (although some of them have high school aged kids, so there are def. high schoolers who are into it, I'd imagine). According to my younger sister, though, mostly the kids still mainly focus on drinking and some on smoking up. Not everyone does it, though...in my crowd, substance abuse/use wasn't really popular...a few might have smoked cigarettes, but that was about it.
Because the size of the town was so small, every one knew everyone and it was impossible to get served in bars underage, and hard to have a big beer bash without it getting busted by somebody, but they did happen. Rural area, lots of farms and backroads. Because it was always deemed to be FAR more fun to go and drive around some other virtually identical, small neighboring town, because your own is "so boring," and meet other, new kids who are essentially just like the ones in your town, there was a lot of driving 10,15,20 miles up and down country stretches of highway, and consequently, lots of accidents, and a high number of fatalities. Some were alcohol-related, some not. But when you've got that many idiot kids screaming around the countryside at typically unsafe speeds and not paying the utmost attention to the road or their driving, you'll have that. My urban peers in college and after were amazed at the percentage of auto accident fatalities among my high school classmates, but they didn't live in worlds where you had to drive miles and miles and miles in order to get to anything for socialization or recreation. Bigger opportunity for tragedy.
Mostly, we just "hung out." There were no movie theatres or malls (closest ones were 15 miles away, which was cool if your mom could drive you before you had a license, and fine one you were driving). We spent a lot of time just hanging out at people's houses. My house was popular, because it was out in the country, big yard, room for bonfires, parents were nice and stayed up late and weren't bothered by kids there late, and it was popular with other parents as a hang-out place, because it was supervised, and because we were good kids.
Job-wise: Fast food restaurants, pizza delivery, grocery store bagger and stocker were pretty much it. There wasn't a lot of retail (due to malls/big box stores 15 miles away), and what little there was (hardware store, drug store) was generally staffed by adults who held onto the jobs for years and years, the positions didn't open up for high schoolers often. There were a few jobs like data entry/file clerk stuff at insurance agents and at our small community hospital, if you knew somebody who'd hold the job for you. Seasonal jobs, like counselor/activities leader for kiddie day camps, lifeguard at the swimming pool, little league coach, etc. were often available, but the same kids tended to get those held for them, too. A lot of us girls babysat. The bulk of my small income in high school came from watching other peoples' kids. There were seasonal agricultural industry jobs, like detassling and deroguing in corn and bean fields, most of the rural kids did those at least a few summers, few of the town kids did.
Allergies/being surrounded by agriculture: I was never a big allergy sufferer and was never bothered by the cropland that surrounded our towns and my house. My understanding is that corn pollen is fairly large, by pollen standards, and less likely be inhaled/cause problems than many other common allergens. My brothers both suffered hay fever seasonally, and having a big chunk of cattle-grazing meadowland adjacent to our property was a bit aggravating for that, since it had a good deal of goldenrod and ragweed in season, and so do the country ditches.
Mice were always a minor issue at the first cold snap after the corn was harvested. The mice would come running to the first warm food source after the corn came down. A few weeks, a few traps, and problem over, though. We never had indoor cats, my dad couldn't abide them. But spring traps worked fine.
Bugs were not an issue. Bats in the barn took care of mosquitoes and many others. Corn borer moths will go splat on your windshield, though, when you drive up and down roads lined by cornfields in growing season. Lots of windshield washing.
Pesticide/runoff is a hot button issue...my area has been part of a decades long study on the relatively high incidence of MS and Parkinson's and certain cancers in the area, and attempts are being made to tie it to farming chemicals and possible groundwater contamination. But nothing conclusive at this point, over the decades. We're also not incredibly far away from a series of nuke plants and are adjacent to a few EPA superfund sites that have nothing to do with farming, so there are lots of possibilities on that front.
Dirt - I grew up on a gravel road, so lots of dust in the air. Also being surrounded by fields in varying states of cultivation, not only did road dust make its way into the house via the air, but actual black, topsoil dirt, too. My mom has always complained about the greater amount of cleaning that needs to be done.
THANKS for all of the info....great stuff! Thanks for your time...
Have a great night!
Sex, alcohol, sex, alcohol, sex, alcohol, sports, alcohol, sex, sometimes drugs...catching a theme? Not all kids of course, but you would be surprised by how much drugs, sex, and alcohol are prevalent in small towns. It is unreal. I went to HS for 2 years in a small town, and I saw coke, acid, a lot of alcohol, sex levels that would shock Hollywood, and all kinds of things which would be unexpected.
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Thanks for your time...
