Having spent the last few years travelling a good deal throughout the American South I come to think about the clichés and put-downs that have become so common in our main-stream urbanized life. Having grown up in a small community and having travelled as well through remote sections of Canada I come to find a commonality among all isolated small-town environments. Mind you I’ve come to find a uniquely parochial disinterest in any matter not germane to the local interest on the American side of the border.
Small towns tend to be isolated, insular, xenophobic, and self-serving. The limited gene pool leads to situations such as the father who scotches his son’s romance with a high school sweetheart because the father clandestinely sired her. Limited opportunities lead to economic and intellectual poverty.
The kinds of sensibilities that inform metropolitan life become meaningless on the small town scheme of things. Privacy is a myth in a place where everyone knows everyone else and is either related or grew up with them. Whether you like someone or not you are dependent on them in times of emergency or life crisis. Fire departments are volunteer, the undertaker runs the ambulance service, the doctor is the coroner. When you’re the only physician within 200 miles you’ve no choice but to treat family members. Conflict of interest goes out the window when the town mayor owns the local car dealership and the general store. When the town sheriff is the only law in town and is the town barber. When the barrister runs the local watering hole.
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