I grew up in a metropolitan area, a large city. Later, we moved to a small city of 25,000. I thought it would be fun to leave big traffic jams, and long travel times to cross the area. It has been fun and now we are used to life here.
But there are differences. Here, when something new comes along, we can't expect to have it unless we order it from some place else. If the new item is in our stores, we have to buy it NOW! Only a few will make it here and they will sell quickly.
Our athletes are familiar with the fact that bigger cities have bigger schools, which have larger student bodies. In addition to other factors, simply having more people to choose from means that the best 5 or 9 or 11 people to take up positions on a team will likely be larger, faster and more skilled than the best that a smaller town can field.
The same sort of phenomenon shows up in our libraries. We have a good selection of basic reference materials and books but we don't have millions of volumes, which means we don't have many original 19th century manuscripts, 18th century gowns or 17th century deeds.
But, we have a good sense of community and cohesion. We know a respected high school teacher by sight. We only have one public high school and our kids and grand kids tend to have had the same teachers. We tend to know who they are and what they teach.
Around here, people often know by heart each house on a major street. They may have attended parties in that first house and they can remember when Hank owned the third house until he moved away. You can sit in a coffee shop and talk to others about each building along a street without using photographs or maps.
Still, we are big enough that there are many communities near us that are smaller. When we first moved here, by chance alone we happened to be living next to a family who had moved here from a town of 300. Our neighbor confided in us that he was a little nervous about moving to such a large city. That comment helped us remember that what we think and feel depends very much on what has happened to us before.
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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety
