You're not talking about town, then, you're talking about a row of houses that are lucky to even have their own speed limit sign. A town's got to have a place to get the odd nut or bolt, be it hardware store or Joe's Service Station.
Of course, most of my experience with small towns comes from when gas was $.899 a gallon, so cars were fairly well supported. The curb (or more specifically, the 4" drop off of the sidewalk) was to keep cars away from people.
Puckdropper
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L
Lew Hodgett
AKA: "A wide place in the road", at least how my dad defined it.
That's a Metropolis
Lew
L
Leon
OKOKOKOKOkokokk reread the subject. It's "small towns." You could do all of the above in the big city. You are talking "the old days" not small towns. LOL
L
LRod
We had a post office, a school, a library, a VFD, two groceries, a feed mill, a diner, a garage, a Grange, a blacksmith shop, and maybe two churches. You can preface every one of those establishments with "small" but it would be redundant.
Most of those are gone, now. The post office was replaced with a modern building in the '60s across the street, the school was phased out and consolidated with others in the township, the library moved next to one of the churches, the VFD is still there, the grocery stores were replaced by a chain supermarket in the next town, the feed mill is now a convenience store, the diner is still there, the garage has come and gone so many times I'm not sure what's there now, the Grange is gone, the blacksmith shop actually may have closed when I was a kid, the churches are still churches, but they have bigger parking lots now because of the businesses which are gone.
No curbs. One flashing red light. The one sidewalk I remember was incidental to the front of the PO and the two side-by-side grocery stores--it existed nowhere else, and not at all, now.
That's a town. It's not a wide spot in the road. It's not a row of houses (the "main" street had maybe two houses on it--all the other houses were on side streets).
Current population from a questionable source is
M
mac davis
I printed it out for my wife, who's from Garrison, ND.. She was laughing so hard she was crying... said "it's all true"..
mac
Please remove splinters before emailing
P
Puckdropper
LRod wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:
*snip*
One town I lived in had a population of around 750, but curbs on several streets. They might have done that with their proximity to the court house, but they had curbs. "Downtown" was a grocery store and "find it yourself" hardware store, bait machine, boat sales, grain elevator, bank, restaurant, and even a laundramat.
The next town over, had a population of around 1200, but no grocery store.
Puckdropper
S
Swingman
"Lew Hodgett" wrote
You could pick up enough bottles on the side of the road on the way home from school each day to buy a moon pie and an orange pop.
R
Ralph
Small town I grew up in had a curbed main street but no pavement. In its hay day (1950's) it had a hotel, post office, hospital, doctors office, drug store, barbershop/poolhall, 2 grocery stores, 2 hardwares/lumber yards,2 cafes, blacksmiths, 2 garages,2 farm equipment sales, a high school and a bank. It had a population of around 500. Mostly closed down now except for a grocery store and a hotel. Population is still the same.
J
J. Clarke
Here's a couple of interesting "small towns" that aren't, quite.
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the curbs and sidewalks and the road. A few miles either way the road peters out into gravel and there are no buildings, just the road and the sidewalks. Town was built to serve a civil engineering and then torn down when it was done.
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looks like a mall. I understand that it's an architectural experiment--one end is all apartments, there's shopping in the middle, and police station, hospital, and school at the other end, so people who live there and don't work in the mine don't have to go outside in the winter. It eventually outgrew the planned building so there are more apartment blocks and individual houses behind the part that you see there. Build to house workers for an iron mine. Population is about 2000.
K
Kate
"Upscale" wrote
*snip*
- some things that are likely true, in some places, but depressing as hell -
Thanks for pissing on the parade. I was enjoying the trip down memory lane.
Kate
U
Upscale
By-product of living in a big city, it's almost always I hear or read about.
Yeah, I regretted hitting the send button two seconds after it was done.
R
Ross Hebeisen
who slipped the terd into the punch bowl?
K
Kate
By-product of living in a big city, it's almost always I hear or read about.
Yeah, I regretted hitting the send button two seconds after it was done.
M
mac davis
What town in Cali, Kate?
mac
Please remove splinters before emailing
S
Swingman
"Kate" wrote
LOL, I posted the below circa five years ago in this forum:
Late 50's and early 60's ... During dove season, and when there was no practice, I occasionally rode my buckskin mare, Nancy Hanks, to school carrying my 20ga Remington Model 11 shotgun with a couple boxes of shells in a shell vest. I tied the horse to the back fence with a halter and, because the lockers weren't big enough, brought the gun and game bag to woodshop for storage (OBWW).
Damn, how times have changed ...
Just imagine if someone today overheard you mention that your hunting vest was locked up in the car trunk at school. SWAT would lock the school down, confiscate everything in your room at home, and detain every member of your family, for starters.
K
Kate
"mac davis" wrote
What town in Cali, Kate?
mac
K
Kate
"Swingman" wrote
Just imagine if someone today overheard you mention that your hunting vest was locked up in the car trunk at school. SWAT would lock the school down, confiscate everything in your room at home, and detain every member of your family, for starters.
S
Swingman
"Kate" wrote
Know the feeling ... none of our family homes are still standing, most falling prey to the widening of highways from two to four lanes. The "pitcher show" is nothing but walls with no roof, downtown area is more plywood than glass, and the football stadium is twice as big as the old school building, amply illustrating where priorities reside in today's culture.
"Progress" ... somehow always seems to end up contradicting its definition.
U
Upscale
Unfortunately, unless the lotto smiles on me, it's unlikely ever to be. My health problems keep me tied pretty closely to the city. Ideally, I'd like to live in some nature preserve, but within 20 minutes travelling time of the medical facilities I need to survive. Don't think there's too many places like that around.
No problem, my cynical nature often expects the worst, but brightens my day when it doesn't happen. Hell, it's pretty much the same with my woodworking. I usually curse and swear my way through whatever I'm building, but I end up pretty satisfied when it's finished and decide that it was all worth the effort. :)
K
Kate
"Upscale" wrote in Unfortunately, unless the lotto smiles on me, it's unlikely ever to be. My health problems keep me tied pretty closely to the city. Ideally, I'd like to live in some nature preserve, but within 20 minutes travelling time of the medical facilities I need to survive. Don't think there's too many places like that around.
-- Umm.... you might consider looking at Tennessee! We have some spetacular medical facilities, and within 20 minuts of many of them, you can get a pretty nice place with some acreage.
No problem, my cynical nature often expects the worst, but brightens my day when it doesn't happen. Hell, it's pretty much the same with my woodworking. I usually curse and swear my way through whatever I'm building, but I end up pretty satisfied when it's finished and decide that it was all worth the effort. :)
-- I think I understand a little better now. I'm an old Irish gal that has a bit of a vocabulary m'salf ;¬D
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