If you have ever decided to stay for the summer or perhaps have a vacation in the countryside, you know that life absolutely moves at a very different pace. From everyone knowing each other, to random wildlife and farm animals showing up all over the place, rural areas are like no other.
Someone asked “What’s the most “small town” thing you’ve witnessed?” and netizens from the suburbs and countryside shared their best examples. So get comfortable as you read through, upvote your favorites and if you have a memorable small-town experience, share it in the comments! We also got in touch with official_biz to learn more.
45 people, a group exactly one shy of the entire adult male population, sitting in lawn chairs, on a fence, and on car hoods…
They were patiently waiting outside of the house of the 46th adult male, who had hit his child hard enough to fracture a rib earlier that day, and was known to smack his wife around a bit..
The best part of the story was when he threatened to call the police chief. “If you don’t all leave, I’m calling Georgie!”
(Chief) Georgie quickly replied from near the guy’s back door… “Present!”
I didn’t get to witness the beating itself, apparently it happened a couple of days later. But he definitely spent the whole night in terror.
Every single person we met went out of their way to try to help us. To this day (4 years later) we still refer to this as the best bad experience we’ve ever had. In fact two years ago we went out of our way to swing through that small town again – and they remembered us. We had a nice chat with the mechanic / garage owner who got our vehicle fixed – showed him it was still on the road, running like a top. A small town will renew your faith in humanity.
Bored Panda got in touch with official_biz who made the original post and they were kind enough to answer some of our questions. Naturally, we were curious to learn why he asked this question in the first place.
“I was inspired to ask the question after a small-town experience of my own. I’d planned to just answer my own question by putting my experience in the comments. When I woke up to something like 4k comments the next morning, I decided to just let them keep rolling in,” they shared.
“What happened to me was this: I was visiting my long-time online friend who lives on a small, remote, mostly unknown island with a population close to 2000. When he picked me up from the ferry and we started driving down the island’s one road, there was a man jogging, to which my friend rolled down the window and made some small talk. He was like, “Wagwan bro?” and such, which was returned before we drove off. Then he turned to me and very casually said, “That guy’s cool… He’s running for president.”
The post, as mentioned, garnered over four thousand comments, so we were curious to hear OP’s opinion on why it was so popular. “I guess a lot of people have these very specific, random impressions of things they’ve seen in small towns that have been burned into their brains because they challenge the assumptions we have about what a normal society should look like. A lot of them are also pretty wholesome.”
A friend of mine posted a picture on Facebook a few months ago, tagging another friend: “Hey, Bubba, your pig got loose and is running around the Dollar General parking lot. Come get him!”
People were more surprised that they’d gotten themselves a Dollar General store than they were about Bubba’s pig.
“There isn’t really much of an outlet to share these with a wider audience so I guess my question gave them a chance to do that. For the people who live in rural, remote, and small towns where those things are considered normal, it can be a neat experience to share about your everyday life in a way that baffles others globally.”
I love my small town! People genuinely care about each other and help each other out. Also one day a year it’s Drive your tractor to School day. And the HS kids bring in sheep and bunnies and horses for the elem kids to come pet. It’s not perfect but I would not trade it! And no it’s not racist. Half Hispanic half white. We all get along! We even have a taco truck that’s as good as anything in LA
Oops, he forgot his wallet.
Old dude at the store, honest to God, says, “You can stop by and pay tomorrow”
“As for my favorite comments, the one that stuck with me was the one that said if you called 911 after midnight, you’d be put on hold so the dispatcher could wake up the sheriff. I haven’t read through them all yet. that’s pretty ambitious. but thanks for the reminder to do that when I need a laugh.”
Heard over the scanner one day. Tourist passing through reports dog on roof at XX address. Can someone go get Frank off the roof please dunno how that son of a gun keeps getting up there”
I grew up in a small Missouri river town that got wiped out in 1993. After rebuilding, the market became a combination hair salon and live bait shop. It was called Perms & Worms. I saw it in person and I still don’t believe it.
“hey can you look out the window and tell me who is walking down the street?”
“yea, that’s the guy from Louisdale who is going out with that Felix girl”
“mk, thanks”
My wife grew up in a very very small town. The first time I went with her to her parent’s house, I drove and she was engrossed in reading a book.
“Let’s go in the back way.”
“Where is that?”
“Turn left at Calvin Adams’ store.”
We passed a rural intersection with nothing on the corner. She looks up and punches my arm.
“You missed the turn.”
“There was no store there!”
“Oh, it burned down years ago. Now turn right at Jack Simpson’s house.”
We pass another empty intersection. There is nothing to see but cotton fields and a clump of trees yonder in the distance. She looks up and punches my arm.
“You missed the turn.”
“Aw c’mon, there’s no house here.”
“It’s behind those trees. You can’t see it from the road.”
A couple of minutes later, without looking up, “He doesn’t live there anymore.”
We finally got there and I’m talking to her mom.
“Which way did you come in?”
“We came in the back way. I missed the turn at Calvin Adams’ store.”
She nodded. “It burned down years ago.”
“Then I missed the turn at Jack Simpson’s house.”
Another nod. “You can’t see it from the road.”
There was a long pause and she added, “He doesn’t live there anymore.”
Small town girl here. When we moved here, we really had people talking. Rumor was “Joe’s” granddaughter bought the house. No, it was “Bob’s” son. They didn’t know we had married each other and everyone was right.
One day, I was walking down the street in our small town and a guy stopped me and asked me for my watch. And I gave it to him because he was the local jeweler and knew I needed a new band.
Also, his dad told him not to sleep with a particular chick because she might be his half-sister.
When we moved to a town of about 1,000 people, the local newspaper published our family portrait on the front page to announce the new preacher had arrived. Not a small pic either; it took up easily a sixth of the front page.
My sisters and I would ride our bikes all over town with our gaggle of friends. Mom would get phone calls from strangers telling her they just saw us, and we were fine. It was just how the moms helped each other keep track of their kids.
The entire school had 27 students comprised of the offspring from twelve families.
A game of kiss-chase is chaotic when you’re related to more than half of the players. lol
I have had people I never met figure out who I was based on my resemblance to my dad and brothers.
A cop came to my first apartment for a noise complaint… he was my cousin…
My girlfriend at the time, needed an ultrasound to check her gaul bladder. I went with her, the machines were all in the maternity ward… My phone was blowing up from family asking when we were expecting *before we left the building*…
My dad owned THE drivers ed school for like 20+ years. We can go literally no where without meeting at least 3 people he taught to drive.
Once got pulled over for, well, using a roundabout properly, but they’re new to the area. The cop told me I’d signaled weirdly so he thought I was drunk… (Left going in then right when I exited at the 3rd exit. I explained that’s how you do it… He checked my license, realized my dad taught him to drive and said “So uh… I’m gonna bet Mr.Driver’s son knows how to use a roundabout better than me. Have a nice day.”
1. Several times in 3rd and 4th grade, we had to evacuate the playground and run inside because the farmer next door’s bull got loose again.
2. well-known local crime wave: the inmates used to break out of jail, go pick up a pizza, and bring it back for everyone. This ended when they finally built a new jail.
3. Our Chevy dealership never locked the new cars on their lot. Want to go consider options after-hours? Just climb on in and see how the interior feels.
4. I distinctly remember triplet calves being on the front page of our once-a-week town newspaper.
5. On designated days, all the farm boys would drive tractors to school. Pulling into the parking lot in the morning, it looked like the set of Footloose or something.
I taught English in a small town in Japan for a couple of years. One day the principal said they were cancelling classes for the afternoon so the police could come give a safety talk.
As the product of the American school system I was thinking drugs? gangs? STDs?
Bicycle safety. Some of the students had been seen riding two to a bicycle through town. We were reminded that bicycles were for one person only, also wear your helmet and always signal your moves to drivers.
Half the crowd jumped to the waitress’s defense and started calling this guy names. He eventually got booed out of the bar.
I entered a general store in a small town, and the owner was playing billiards with some of the other men in town. I asked to buy a coke, and the guy smiled from across the hall and asked me to just take what I needed and leave some cash on the counter, assuming it was approximately the correct amount.
The grocery store social hour.
In a big city, the store can be packed, but it’s basically 100 different individuals/groups going about their day.
In a small town, half the time, it’s hard to get through the aisle because two people are chit chatting, regularly they both will stop talking to each other to say hi to someone else waking by.
Everybody knows everybody, and everybody goes to the grocery store.
Cows escaped a farm and were hanging out in a field nearby and occasionally wandering into the road and holding up traffic. Took like a week or so to get them to wander back home
“The cinema is a really long drive though, don’t know if I feel up for that.” -Me
The cinema is a 15 minute drive
They had a lost and found section. It read like this:
FOUND
A child’s left glove, green then gave an address. I couldn’t believe it.
Quoting my dad because he grew up in the Appalachian hills of hillbilly, Pennsylvania country:
“The grocery store was on the other side of the hill and our football field was on some rented out land from a kind dairy farmer.”
I lost my wallet, went to DMV to replace my license. The guy there asked me if i had any other ID, but i didn’t. He said “you know, you look just like your daddy” and issued me a new license anyway.
If you have ever decided to stay for the summer or perhaps have a vacation in the countryside, you know that life absolutely moves at a very different pace. From everyone knowing each other, to random wildlife and farm animals showing up all over the place, rural areas are like no other.
Someone asked “What's the most "small town" thing you've witnessed?” and netizens from the suburbs and countryside shared their best examples. So get comfortable as you read through, upvote your favorites and if you have a memorable small-town experience, share it in the comments! We also got in touch with official_biz to learn more.
They were patiently waiting outside of the house of the 46th adult male, who had hit his child hard enough to fracture a rib earlier that day, and was known to smack his wife around a bit..
The best part of the story was when he threatened to call the police chief. "If you don't all leave, I'm calling Georgie!"
(Chief) Georgie quickly replied from near the guy's back door... "Present!"
I didn't get to witness the beating itself, apparently it happened a couple of days later. But he definitely spent the whole night in terror.
Every single person we met went out of their way to try to help us. To this day (4 years later) we still refer to this as the best bad experience we've ever had. In fact two years ago we went out of our way to swing through that small town again - and they remembered us. We had a nice chat with the mechanic / garage owner who got our vehicle fixed - showed him it was still on the road, running like a top. A small town will renew your faith in humanity.
Bored Panda got in touch with official_biz who made the original post and they were kind enough to answer some of our questions. Naturally, we were curious to learn why he asked this question in the first place.
“I was inspired to ask the question after a small-town experience of my own. I'd planned to just answer my own question by putting my experience in the comments. When I woke up to something like 4k comments the next morning, I decided to just let them keep rolling in,” they shared.
“What happened to me was this: I was visiting my long-time online friend who lives on a small, remote, mostly unknown island with a population close to 2000. When he picked me up from the ferry and we started driving down the island's one road, there was a man jogging, to which my friend rolled down the window and made some small talk. He was like, "Wagwan bro?" and such, which was returned before we drove off. Then he turned to me and very casually said, "That guy's cool... He's running for president."
The post, as mentioned, garnered over four thousand comments, so we were curious to hear OP’s opinion on why it was so popular. “I guess a lot of people have these very specific, random impressions of things they've seen in small towns that have been burned into their brains because they challenge the assumptions we have about what a normal society should look like. A lot of them are also pretty wholesome.”
A friend of mine posted a picture on Facebook a few months ago, tagging another friend: "Hey, Bubba, your pig got loose and is running around the Dollar General parking lot. Come get him!"
People were more surprised that they'd gotten themselves a Dollar General store than they were about Bubba's pig.
“There isn't really much of an outlet to share these with a wider audience so I guess my question gave them a chance to do that. For the people who live in rural, remote, and small towns where those things are considered normal, it can be a neat experience to share about your everyday life in a way that baffles others globally.”
I love my small town! People genuinely care about each other and help each other out. Also one day a year it's Drive your tractor to School day. And the HS kids bring in sheep and bunnies and horses for the elem kids to come pet. It's not perfect but I would not trade it! And no it's not racist. Half Hispanic half white. We all get along! We even have a taco truck that's as good as anything in LA
Oops, he forgot his wallet.
Old dude at the store, honest to God, says, "You can stop by and pay tomorrow"
“As for my favorite comments, the one that stuck with me was the one that said if you called 911 after midnight, you'd be put on hold so the dispatcher could wake up the sheriff. I haven't read through them all yet. that's pretty ambitious. but thanks for the reminder to do that when I need a laugh.”
Heard over the scanner one day. Tourist passing through reports dog on roof at XX address. Can someone go get Frank off the roof please dunno how that son of a gun keeps getting up there”
I grew up in a small Missouri river town that got wiped out in 1993. After rebuilding, the market became a combination hair salon and live bait shop. It was called Perms & Worms. I saw it in person and I still don't believe it.
"hey can you look out the window and tell me who is walking down the street?"
"yea, that's the guy from Louisdale who is going out with that Felix girl"
"mk, thanks"
My wife grew up in a very very small town. The first time I went with her to her parent’s house, I drove and she was engrossed in reading a book.
“Let’s go in the back way.”
“Where is that?”
“Turn left at Calvin Adams’ store.”
We passed a rural intersection with nothing on the corner. She looks up and punches my arm.
“You missed the turn.”
“There was no store there!”
“Oh, it burned down years ago. Now turn right at Jack Simpson’s house.”
We pass another empty intersection. There is nothing to see but cotton fields and a clump of trees yonder in the distance. She looks up and punches my arm.
“You missed the turn.”
“Aw c’mon, there’s no house here.”
“It’s behind those trees. You can’t see it from the road.”
A couple of minutes later, without looking up, “He doesn’t live there anymore.”
We finally got there and I’m talking to her mom.
“Which way did you come in?”
“We came in the back way. I missed the turn at Calvin Adams’ store.”
She nodded. “It burned down years ago.”
“Then I missed the turn at Jack Simpson’s house.”
Another nod. “You can’t see it from the road.”
There was a long pause and she added, “He doesn’t live there anymore.”
Small town girl here. When we moved here, we really had people talking. Rumor was "Joe's" granddaughter bought the house. No, it was "Bob's" son. They didn't know we had married each other and everyone was right.
One day, I was walking down the street in our small town and a guy stopped me and asked me for my watch. And I gave it to him because he was the local jeweler and knew I needed a new band.
Also, his dad told him not to sleep with a particular chick because she might be his half-sister.
When we moved to a town of about 1,000 people, the local newspaper published our family portrait on the front page to announce the new preacher had arrived. Not a small pic either; it took up easily a sixth of the front page.
My sisters and I would ride our bikes all over town with our gaggle of friends. Mom would get phone calls from strangers telling her they just saw us, and we were fine. It was just how the moms helped each other keep track of their kids.
The entire school had 27 students comprised of the offspring from twelve families.
A game of kiss-chase is chaotic when you're related to more than half of the players. lol
I have had people I never met figure out who I was based on my resemblance to my dad and brothers.
A cop came to my first apartment for a noise complaint... he was my cousin...
My girlfriend at the time, needed an ultrasound to check her gaul bladder. I went with her, the machines were all in the maternity ward... My phone was blowing up from family asking when we were expecting *before we left the building*...
My dad owned THE drivers ed school for like 20+ years. We can go literally no where without meeting at least 3 people he taught to drive.
Once got pulled over for, well, using a roundabout properly, but they're new to the area. The cop told me I'd signaled weirdly so he thought I was drunk... (Left going in then right when I exited at the 3rd exit. I explained that's how you do it... He checked my license, realized my dad taught him to drive and said "So uh... I'm gonna bet Mr.Driver's son knows how to use a roundabout better than me. Have a nice day."
1. Several times in 3rd and 4th grade, we had to evacuate the playground and run inside because the farmer next door’s bull got loose again.
2. well-known local crime wave: the inmates used to break out of jail, go pick up a pizza, and bring it back for everyone. This ended when they finally built a new jail.
3. Our Chevy dealership never locked the new cars on their lot. Want to go consider options after-hours? Just climb on in and see how the interior feels.
4. I distinctly remember triplet calves being on the front page of our once-a-week town newspaper.
5. On designated days, all the farm boys would drive tractors to school. Pulling into the parking lot in the morning, it looked like the set of Footloose or something.
I taught English in a small town in Japan for a couple of years. One day the principal said they were cancelling classes for the afternoon so the police could come give a safety talk.
As the product of the American school system I was thinking drugs? gangs? STDs?
Bicycle safety. Some of the students had been seen riding two to a bicycle through town. We were reminded that bicycles were for one person only, also wear your helmet and always signal your moves to drivers.
Half the crowd jumped to the waitress's defense and started calling this guy names. He eventually got booed out of the bar.
I entered a general store in a small town, and the owner was playing billiards with some of the other men in town. I asked to buy a coke, and the guy smiled from across the hall and asked me to just take what I needed and leave some cash on the counter, assuming it was approximately the correct amount.
The grocery store social hour.
In a big city, the store can be packed, but it's basically 100 different individuals/groups going about their day.
In a small town, half the time, it's hard to get through the aisle because two people are chit chatting, regularly they both will stop talking to each other to say hi to someone else waking by.
Everybody knows everybody, and everybody goes to the grocery store.
Cows escaped a farm and were hanging out in a field nearby and occasionally wandering into the road and holding up traffic. Took like a week or so to get them to wander back home
“The cinema is a really long drive though, don’t know if I feel up for that.” -Me
The cinema is a 15 minute drive
They had a lost and found section. It read like this:
FOUND
A child's left glove, green then gave an address. I couldn't believe it.
Quoting my dad because he grew up in the Appalachian hills of hillbilly, Pennsylvania country:
"The grocery store was on the other side of the hill and our football field was on some rented out land from a kind dairy farmer."
I lost my wallet, went to DMV to replace my license. The guy there asked me if i had any other ID, but i didn't. He said "you know, you look just like your daddy" and issued me a new license anyway.
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