Jump to content

Small Town U.S.A.


Recommended Posts

  • Replies 41
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

Rob!!! Settle down or I'll have to do rude things to your contra!!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Due to the fact that this IS a public forum, and I am too much of a lady to go into details, you can use your imagination thank you very much. :angel:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I always liked Glen Falls, Rome, and Hornell, NY. Odgenburg was nice too.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

In 1985 and 1986, VK stayed in Middleton, WI for finals week. I have a very clear memory of having some down time after dinner one night, and I took a walk in a neighborhood just adjacent to the high school (I was a little bit of a loner, so walking by myself was some much needed unwind time). And I remember it being very warm, humid, but the sun was down, it was sort of that twilight time, and walking down this street and seeing all the houses with their front doors open...you could hear TV's and people talking...very very peaceful. Also noticed that none of the houses had fences around their property...very strange for a southern Californian to see that sort of wide openness. In 1987, we stayed in (I think I remember this right) Jamestown (???) WI. All I know it's the same city where Geraldo Rivera got his ### kicked by the white supremacist a few years later...VERY nice little city too...

Oh yeah...almost forgot...Bountiful, UT. VERY nice small town feel there...nice cemetary too!! heeeeeeeeeeeeee heeeeeeeeeeeee....

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...

Good day -July 4th- to be thinking of small town America. When I moved from California to Minneapolis-by-way-of-Colorado in 72 and began my "Adventures In The Unknown Interior Of America", to borrow the title from Cabeza De Vaca, I started a personal love affair with Small Town America.

After growing up in the Los Angeles area, moving to the Sunnyvale/Santa Clara/Cupertino area when there were still open fields up there was one thing, but Minnesota/Wisconsin and later the mountains of Idaho/Montana....THAT was small town America to me.

Trempealeau, WI pop. 700 in about 1979.....right on the banks of the Mississippi at mile marker 714.5, left descending shore....even back in Mpls. in the earlier 70s, when it was just about 2 mil pop if you threw in St. Paul, seemed like a small town to me......wedding dances in Wilmar, MN.....big old quanset hut with concrete floors....the band consisting of 1 old guy on accordian, one guy with a little combo rig for percussion, a Fender bass player...every one of them old enough to not get carded for an IHOP breakfast on Senior Citizen's Day.......Ely! "We go Ely, eh?" Up there by Boundary Waters in da Nort' Woods....

...most strange and hypnotic rhythmic sound I ever heard was all those farmers waltzing at that Wilmar wedding dance and hearing that silent step on the one and then the heavy "shhh-shhh" of their feet sliding across that concrete floor on two and three. (OK, I was pretty loaded, but it sure was "ethnic.")

Little towns like Galesville, WI......still got a pond across from the town square where you can ice skate in the winter and an honest to goodness band shell in the town square.

Little Falls Township, WI, where my farm was......coupla bars and a post office all within sound of the artillery impact range from Fort McCoy.

Tetonia, Idaho: Gateway to Grand Targhee and The Tetons.....old timers there remember when elk herds numbered in the thousands and you could sit on your cabin porch and watch them thunder and bugle.....DuBois (pronounced "Doo Boyz"), Driggs....Rock Springs and Green River, WY, not a place to be a longhair back in the early 70s, trust me....cowboys and oil field roughnecks come into town on Friday night to beat up the hippies and if there weren't any, they beat up each other.....

Even good old Vail, Co, back in the day when there was just 400 or so of us locals.....rich, small town......had to go down to Glenwood Springs to get to the closest Safeway....60 miles or so through beautiful Colorado passes......hear the jake brakes coming down off Vail Pass in the early hours of the morning: be there all snuggled against your old lady and hear that sound and feel the "High Lonesome" and want to go someplace deeper into the heart of the American West.....trains in the distance do that to me, too.

But, small towns: I love them......and have lived in them for over 30 years.....small towns in California's Sierra Nevada: John Muir's "Range Of Light," funky little beach towns half way between San Francisco and LA......all those cowboys-farmers-truckers-waitresses-drum corps people in unexpected places.....

Sorry, waxing poetic. I love small town America......I got to see a bunch of it on my walkabout. Drum corps in Emporia, Kansas: Hutchinson SKy Ryders, Emporia Plainsmen, Enid, OK, Legionettes....that must have been in 1962 or 63.......

I think Maggie (Ms. Bus Driver) is much more eloquent in her posts here than I and she captures what it was like to tour Small Town America back then....buy I would add that I have met the nicest, most honest, just "good people" in Small Town America and learned a lot of lessons about life and proper respect that I might have otherwise missed out on.

RON HOUSLEY

Edited by ffernbus3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.



×
×
  • Create New...