The down side of a stable place

According to the story, Fort Wayne has a population of 250,000.

If you are serious about the Benedict Option, I'd pick a town with a population of no more than 1,000. The place I'm at has 650.

If you are serious about the Benedict Option, I'd pick a town with a population of no more than 1,000. The place I'm at has 650.

But is it really simpler there? Or it the Benedict Option just a search for something that can't be. I read the blog yesterday of the woman who moved from Florida to the small town in Kentucky. Her life doesn't seem all that blissful or spiritual. It seems like she hasn't left her troubles behind: she's still a slum lord, still obsessive about money, still rather defensive and a little angry. How has her life--physically, spiritually, and intellectually--improved by hauling everyone out to the farm?

I agree with Anna. I also grew up in the Heartland. Enjoy every chance I get to go back to my home town of a thousand people. Coffee shop opens at 4:30 AM. Most all the patrons are farmers in families running over a thousand acres. (At $5K+ an acre, do the math.) These aren't hicks. They are sophisticated businessmen. Enjoy discussing issues with them. Irregardless of where I live, it will always be my home. And to them, I have never left.

Anna, I've never heard the word "townie" unless it was in reference to the old town and gown conflict that dates back at least as far as the founding of Oxford. In that case, though, the townies are the hicks. In Wisconsin when i was young, we used to tease some of our relatives for being city slickers, but I don't recall ever hearing a name for those of us from rural and small town backgrounds. After all, for most of us, that was the default and there was no conflict that I recall between small town people and farmers. It was those darn city slickers that had us worried.

Size isn't the issue, it's whether a community is inbred and overly set in its ways. That can be said of plenty of big towns -- especially those in economic stasis or decline. Small towns can more quickly assimilate nonconformists and eccentrics, because there's more day-to-day contact among old-timers and newcomers. It's harder to demonize familiar faces.

The worst cultural insularity and polarization is found in ethnically homogeneous suburbs and exurbs, which cocoon their residents in cul-de-sac developments, with shopping, amenities, churches and other community institutions frequented by hardly anyone outside the immediate area.

Another factor you don't address: The Internet has commercially, informationally, socially -- even spiritually -- opened up formerly isolated small towns, more than anything since the introduction of paved roads in the 1920s and '30s.

"The Townie/Hick divide...is this a distinctly Southern thing?"

No, it's rural north as well. I grew up in a small town/city (35,000 or so), and we thought of those living in the smaller outlying communities -- whether 100 or 1,000 -- as hicks, who called us in turn townies.

Why do I get the feeling if Rod posted on the blueness of the sky, Daniel would insist that that was a GOP plot of Rovian proportions and that the sky was actually red?

As far as Amy's post -- she's one of the most gentle souls out there. I was surprised she wrote what she did. That said, I didn't think it was all that uncharitable -- a lot of critical socio-cultural analysis, but it seems she's spot-on in many ways, having come from a similar place.

JParker: Many small town are run more like feudal baronies and the attitudes and priorities of the local elites==public policy.

Sounds like where I'm from--and to some extent, where I live now. Sigh.

Anna: While I haven't heard the word "townie", your description rings exactly true. I am from Appalachia, where my family still live; my wife's family is from and still live in the Midwest. In both cases, there is blue-collar farming background. The attitudes, though, are light-years apart. It seems that in my home region, there is a definite anti-intellectualism, a distrust of outsiders (heck, my cousin refuses to visit the largest city in our state, population about 270,000, because it's a pit of iniquity!), and an almost fetishization of being as loud and proud of a redneck as you can be (the aforementioned cousin is proud to declare himself a redneck, and to embody as many negative stereotypes as he can).

On the other hand, I notice that even working-class Midwesterners are interested in things outside their region and often very well-read and conversant with national and world affairs. Even those who are down-to-earth and rough around the edges don't feel the need to be as much like Larry the Cable Guy as possible.

Please note--these are generalizations and anecdotal evidence; still, I think there's more than a little validity to them.

Rod: [Y]ou end up with culture wars like the one that erupted over Sarah Palin, which was really class war in disguise. Urban people fear and loathe small town and city people, and vice versa. Same planet, different worlds.

Given what I pointed out in response to Anna, I don't think it's exactly a class war (though there are components of that), or quite a matter of urban vs. rural. I think it is truly cultural, in that there is an increasingly a tendency in this country to fetishize or exalt a perceived image of the "huntin', shootin', God-fearin', neighbor-helpin', I'm-no-fancy-egghead-type, down-home, salt-of-the-earth real folks". People, this is an image, and like all images, only partly true. It's not so much urban vs. rural (although there is some of that), but a certain type of mentality that either really is inward-turned, uncurious, and tribal, or which wants to buy that image, vs. the opposite type of mentality which isn't ashamed of where it comes from, but is willing to engage the outside world and doesn't need to fit an image.

This is why the whole thing about Sarah Palin has driven me bats**** crazy. So much of the support for her was based on this exact kind of manipulative reverse snobbery, as if to suggest that attacks on her must stem from snooty urbanites or urban wannabes.

I think Rod's point about mobiity is part of it. I don't recall, thirty or forty years ago, that things, even in my native region, were as bad as they are now. On the other hand, I do think that there really are certain attitudes that can't be blamed on mobility or lack of it. How to deal with that? There's the rub.

I am a bit conflicted about Amy's post. I'm a nearly-lifelong Hoosier and I've never cared for Fort Wayne, and in college we used to joke about how all of the "Wayners" wanted to move back for no apparent reason. Still, parts of the post are just downright petty and unfair. To name a few:
1) Did she really think Fort Wayne was going to be like Nashville (or Knoxville, both well-regarded college towns)? Five minutes of research would have told her otherwise. I have heard of Fort Wayne described as an oversized farm town, which is probably fair. And some people like that, but again, if Amy thought she was getting something else, that was her own fault.
2) The interstate access thing seems like an odd slam. That's the way interstates are built in many cities of that size, particularly in Indiana. I-69 can't be more than a 10 minute drive from downtown Fort Wayne. It's close enough to the city for a reduced speed limit, darn it! Also, it's odd that she laments the lack of access to Columbus, Ohio when Indianapolis is an easy drive down the road. I realize Indy isn't Chicago, but it's about on par with Columbus, and probably offers more in some respects.
3) I've lived in towns much smaller and much more insular than Fort Wayne (including one of those "stupid towns" on US 30 that slows down the trip to Chicago--my goodness, can you imagine Rod's reaction if a liberal said such a thing about Wasilla?). I'm no extrovert, but I still managed to make solid, lasting friendships in a short time. I wonder how much of this failure to blend is based more on things specific to the situation than to Fort Wayne's inadequacy.

Overall, it seems to be an unnecessarily angry and uncharitable post. Fort Wayne is a small city of 250,000 surrounded by cornfields and with no major university. Amy didn't do much careful research before moving there, and now lashes out because it was exactly what any reasonable person would have expected it to be. I don't really like the place either, so I won't move there.

If you'd like to discuss specifics of Amy's post about Fort Wayne, please go do so at the thread at her blog. If you want to talk about the general points she was making about small-town (or small-city) life, then let's continue here. I'd rather not let this thread turn into a referendum on Amy Welborn; let's keep it at the issues she raises.

The great thing about America is that when you wear out your welcome in one place you can just plop down somewhere else. If you're a writer it just makes it all that much easier.

My family moved to a suburb of a medium sizzed metropolitan area 8 years ago. It has taken us this long just to make a few friends. Where we are I've always blamed it on the presence of lots of people of norwegian, scandinavian, german and swedish stock - people who seem tempermentally to be closed off. But it's very frustrating to live someplace where people won't look at you, much less speak to you. Or those who are very nice and smiley towards you when you see them, but would as soon gnaw their own leg off as invite you to their home. Or who are always, for literally years at a time, just too busy for their child to come over to play. I would seriously challenge people - townies, hicks or whatever - to make up in their mind that they will be more open and hospitable to those they do not know well. As Christians in particular we are supposed to be hospitable to people. Yeah, we're all different. And yeah, you may wind up with someone you think is slightly touched sitting at your kitchen table. But they're thinking the same thing about you and variety is the spice of life, after all. This means that odd family from your kid's soccer team or the one interracial family in your neighborhood who everyone smiles and nods at, but no one has tried to befriend. Just being pleasant isn't enough. Anyhow, that's my $.02 on small towns, small cities, or anywhere in between where people have a tendency to be insular. It's not just a comfortable habit - it's something which can cause others serious pain.

We always used the word "townie" to describe the white, blue-collar people who lived year-round at the beach community (Sag Harbor, in the Hamptons out on Long Island, NY) where my family spent our summers growing up. We "summer people" were all black, well-educated, affluent Obama types, so you can imagine the hostility between us and the year-rounders.

We called them townies, but I don't know what words they used to describe us, LOL.

Speaking of Amy Welborn, Rod, are you ever going to update the link on your blog page so that it takes you to her current blog ("Charlotte was Both") instead of to her old blog ("Open Book") which she stopped writing and updating over a year ago?

The gloves come off:

Why do I get the feeling if Rod posted on the blueness of the sky, Daniel would insist that that was a GOP plot of Rovian proportions and that the sky was actually red?

Why do I get the feeling if Rod posted on the moon being made of creamcheese and the earth being flat, Irenaeus would be leading the "Amen corner" and nominating Rod for a McArthur genius grant?

Okay, boys, step back and breathe ...iiiiinnnnn....oooouuuuuttt ...iiiiinnn....ouuuuuttttt....

I think MikeF makes an interesting point. When people were less mobile, more different types were forced to put up with each other. Now, it's different.

Anyway, this is a fascinating and relevant story from today's New Republic. Briefly, it makes the argument that we're not really either an urban or rural country, but a country based on semi-autonomous metropolitan areas. There are high levels of interconnection within these areas, and they produce the bulk of the GDP. According to the article, such metro areas have needs different from those of small, self-contained rural towns and those of the sterotypical big city. Politicians and the electorate don't quite get this, and thus the failure of discussion and policy. Check it out--it's a thought-provoking piece.