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Population is steady and jobs are plentiful. People take pride in the community, most properties are kept up well. The town reinvests in itself with new swimming pool, golf course, schools, and updating Main St.
You can get anywhere in 3 minutes but you don't always get out quickly because you are always stopping to chat with someone, whether it be a business owner or a fellow customer. The old men gather for coffee in the mornings and a beer at the bar in the afternoons. We have Taco Tuesday and Thirsty Thursday. Friday nights are for high school sports. Attending a movie at the theater (2 screens) costs less than $5, or you can just stop in and buy a popcorn and watch your movie at home. At the grocery store, they carry your items to your car and load them up, and no you are not expected to tip. There are diners, a bakery, and a coffee/ice cream shop. All winter long you can find a church pancake breakfast or soup supper on Sunday but not much else is open. One stop light and of course the train comes through town right along Main St.
Sounds like a nice movie to me….. My state I don’t think an area is allowed to have less then 10,000 people (New Jersey) so tired of city life and everything so crowded or busy…. My town has 29,000 people and we a “small town” life just isn’t meant to be like this, I would love to move to an area Magen about 10,000-15,000 in a state that doesn’t want to tax you to death and that doesn’t have toll roads…. And traffic….
Again, I am sorry you feel the way you do but I feel I have to push back a little. The opiod crisis affects rural, suburban, and urban areas alike. Unfortunately, the MSM seems to portray the crises as mainly a rural one. They run stories that make one think that a Nebraska or Kansas High School Football team are all addicted, mainly because they all have to eat rocks off the side of the road because their parents all lost their farms. Meanwhile, cities like San Francisco are featured for the new Utopian art gallery opening, and never their addiction and homeless crisis. I believe we are purposely pushed into believing rural america is pure hell, a place you would never want to live, and if you do...run! Maybe because it's the way rural america, votes, stands by it's values, and prays. I live next to a upper middle class medium (about 20k residents) size town here in wealthy CT. I can show pictures of the rear of a small plaza parking lot with used needles littering the pavement. It's everywhere.
BTW, I went to a farm over the weekend to pick up some hay bales for our horses. It was my 1st time there and I got his # from craigslist. He was in his 70's, a lifelong farmer. He talked my ear off! Every farmer I've ever met loves to "shoot the breeze" as I put it before. Have to push back on that!
The cattle are easier to control if they all are in big groups…. If you get what I mean by cattle… and yes San Francisco is hell on earth now along with Chicago and New York City…. Rural but not tiny town sounds very nice. 10k to 20k that would be ideal
The cattle are easier to control if they all are in big groups…. If you get what I mean by cattle… and yes San Francisco is hell on earth now along with Chicago and New York City…. Rural but not tiny town sounds very nice. 10k to 20k that would be ideal
Perhaps Corning NY would be a good fit, but it does have a Fortune 500 company(Corning Incorporated).
It's hard to believe this thread I started a long time ago is still going strong. Makes me smile knowing there are members thinking about that peaceful small town that time forgot. Hopefully it is bringing a smile to their face also, especially during these very difficult times. My wife and I are determined to make 2021 our last year living in Connecticut. Our boys are going into their final years at their schools and will be moving up to new schools, and a job change is needed. Always seems that no matter what size the town or area, they always need an experienced nurse and a guy that's pretty good at swinging a hammer, or plumbing a toilet. Think it will be a good time for our family to make the escape!
I grew up in suburban Detroit, the nice part (Oakland County). I've been a suburbanite all my life, and wonder if I will die one. I'm looking for a small to mid-size town to buy a home, or maybe condo, to live out retirement. Another thread, maybe.
In Michigan, in the 1980s when I could drive, times were pretty tough for various reasons mostly around Rust Belt economic and social problems. We didn't go downtown Detroit, it was a great way to get mugged or worse (yes, really, for awhile there).
Other end, Michigan has tons of little towns. Kalkaska, Mt. Pleasant, even Marquette (closest thing to a city in the Upper Peninsula). Maybe Hancock-Houghton. H-H may be close what you want, but my lord it's isolated up on the Keweenaw Peninsula into Lake Superior. Things are cheap and sleepy there because they receive huge snowfall every year, and it's way isolated from...everything. Black bears wandering around. Wonder if there aren't more bears than people. Don't mess with them, they'll extend the same courtesy, I found the few times I visited there.
Ely, Nevada is sort of a outpost of the damned, Nevada-style. I have no idea what anyone does for a living there anymore, it was a mining boom and bust down (Copper pits and tailings piles that will stand for a thousand years, I'm sure, given the lack of rainfall). I kind of liked Ely, all the times I visited, but living there...man, I dunno. Real small, couple thousand people. Loneliest town in America, on hwy 50 ("Loneliest Road in America," so-called. I personally found Hwy 50 spectacular.)
Virginia City, Nevada tries to keep the old "wild West" motif going. I used to get boozed up there when I was 22 and fancied myself a bar-busting old west gangsta. That never served me well, but was pretty funny all considered, me on my Japanese sportbike. I don't think that quite hits OP's desired town concept. BTW, last I heard they hauled two BILLION ounces of silver out of the V.C. area, it helped fund the Civil War. There are thousands of feet of shafts and adits, most flooded last I heard. Those ruins, too, will last a thousand years or more given the slow rate of any decay out there...it's more like a graveyard from the 19th Century with people living in the ruins.
Maybe Ashland, OR, with a cute downtown that is starting to remind me of Santa Barbara, filled with rich refugees from CA. Thought i might want to buy my dream home there, since CA will implode eventually. I don't think it's the best place to retire, either (Oregon the state). There may be some towns like OP wants up along the Columbia, west of Portland out to Astoria: it's pretty Norman Rockwell up there. Can't name any at the moment, though, and more exploration needed all in good time.
Enough for now. I know beans about Kansas or Nebraska, not my scene now or ever. I'd like to see "Dodge City" at least once, though, see if there's anything interesting to it.
Friend of mine from grad school, very long ago, is a pastor at a small town in Nebraska, off the I-80 and all the rail lines. Looks pretty Norman Rockwell, just like he'd like it I'm sure. He has his congregation and they do well enough, I assume. Haven't been there, the town is Gothenburg, Nebraska. Looks like a "Children of the Corn" kind of place to me (shudder). Wonder if they have a town curfew at 9pm daily...hmm.
Kakaska, lol! When we need to go into a big town nearby, that's where we go! Bears are here, too; we just had one in our backyard, and a weird thought occurred to me. I wonder if bears think we taste like chicken?
Ely was always pretty; have been there a few times. Like Flagstaff, AZ, you can hear the trains growl from a long distance off in these places. Wife and I looked at Ashland OR, in 1989, couldn't afford it at that time. I'll bet it's pretty wild $$ now. During one of our cross-country jaunts, we stumbled into Grand Island, Nebraska when we were close to death (from lack of Mexican food, lol), and found one of the best restaurants ever, on that trip. Second only to Blue Moon Cafe in Eureka, CA. Probably both are gone now; we used to travel a LOT, lived from San Diego to Northern Maine, and various places from coast - coast on our life journey. We always judged an area based on available food, not only on cost! The reason we ended up way up here is that I became a good cook !
Did you like Grand Island, Nebraska ? What's in that area ? Lakes, etc.
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