Gravel Paves the Road to The White House

The sound of gravel crunching under slow-moving tires is the sound of the small town to me.  The sound of cicadas on a warm summer evening, while you wave at your neighbors honking as they drive past your home.  That is small town life.

 

I grew up in a small town of 5,000 in Southern Illinois.  Our town was the metropolis of our county, or so it seemed to me.  We were surrounded by towns whose populations made them more like villages, whose residents came to our town to shop at the Wal-Mart or go out to eat at the fancy new smorgasbord.

Separating those towns from ours were two-lane roads bordered by cornfields, soybean fields, cows, and hay bales.  The only traffic lights were the blinking kind.  You often had to pass tractors on the road or hold your tongue as you followed behind the Amish in their wagons.  It was that kind of small town.

The phrase "small town values" is being thrown around a lot lately.  On one side of the aisle, you hear the declaration "We believe in small town values."  On the other side, you hear the question "But what are small town values?"

Defining "small town values" is as easy as defining what "love" is to a toddler.  You know it when you feel it, but it is difficult to put into words, particularly when you find yourself on the spot facing a raised eyebrow and a smug smirk awaiting your sure-to-be fumbling explanation.

 

 

(feed readers, click through for video above)

The question of small town values and whether or not they are relevant or important is intriguing, regardless of your political leanings.  The majority of our country, if not our world, is small towns.  Much of the populations of our cities migrated from small towns.  Small-town-America is the root of this country, so what does that mean to us?

There is no one definition of what "small town values" is, but to me it means a greater ability to see the people around you.  Really see them.

Have you ever spent so much time online for weeks at a time that you find your head utterly filled with noise?  You didn't notice it happening, but then you step outside one evening, discover it quiet, and realize that you had cocooned yourself within a wall of static? 

Picture yourself working on your computer, appliances running in the kitchen, laundry running in the next room, kids watching TV, husband listening to his iPod...  and suddenly the power goes out.  After much rummaging around for flashlights and grumbling about how you have so much to get done, you finally submit to the fact that you'll probably be in the dark for at least a few more hours, which no amount of huffing and puffing will change.

And then it happens.  You realize that you've just had an eye-to-eye conversation with your kids that lasted longer than the time it takes to say, "In a minute..." or "As soon as I finish..." or "Tell me about that while I'm..." 

Notice how they cut their eyes the way your grandmother used to when they say, "I have a good idea..." and then that idea is revealed to revolve around candy.  The way they touch their hair when they are thinking of what to say next or tap their fingers together while anticipating your answer on that candy question still on the table.

It's easy to miss those details when you aren't even looking at them.

There is nothing to distract you from them and you find yourself able to see them.  See them clearly.  Hear them without the background hum of your modern life keeping you consistently 20% distracted.

That feeling is what small town life is to me.  It is a simplification, to be sure, but when compared to life in a large city, I think it is accurate.  For me, at least.

Now take it a step further and imagine turning off the TV news and radio talk programs and Internet for two weeks.  No newspapers, no magazines, nothing other than your personal world filling your attention.  You still listen to music and watch movies, go out to dinner and take your kids to the park.  But you aren't necessarily aware of what is going on a world away.  You don't know about every tropical depression forming in the ocean and cease fire being negotiated over some sandy terrain.

I have done that.  I can tell you first-hand how amazing it is to watch your priorities crystallize.  To feel the stress drain away that you never knew was there, held in the base of your neck, stemming from problems that may or may not ever have anything to do with you.

You find yourself living your life, not a million other people's.

That firmly planted grounding of self and family and immediate community is small town values to me.   

I am not advocating ignorance.  I'm not even advocating small town life.  Rather, I am trying to put my finger on what small town values are by submerging myself in the feeling of a small town and reaching down to the core of me, asking "What do you see?  How do you feel?"

I feel compassion on a personal level.  I see community at its root.  I am digging my hands into a foundation that is rich and firm, but that must be maintained in order to remain strong and fertile. 

Without that strong foundation, we can not build our tall towers that allow us to see those that were previously beyond our horizon and beyond our reach.  Beyond our help.

Ask yourself, "What are small town values?"  Tell me why they are important.  Tell me how we can ever help globally if we can not first live a fully realized life locally.

Gravel paves the road to The White House.  I struggle to articulate why that is important to remember, but my gut tells me that it is.

...........................

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Comments

[crunchy carpets]

Is it not more about how there are no secrets in a small town? How news travels fast? How it can be almost incestuous?

How conformity HAS to be key..if you don't fit in, who are you ever going to talk to?

I think for too many, the concept of 'smalltown' is based on something they saw on tv or (gasp) read in a book.

It is that fake Normal Rockwell thing again.
Like the idea that the 50's was a 'magical' time in the US..when really..it was far from it.

People are basing their votes and ideals on things that are not real.

That is scary to me

[Julie]

Megan, that was beautifully written and so true. I appreciate you putting all the swirling words of politicos into some perspective for me today, I truly needed it. You have such a gift!

[Julie]

Oh... and by the way, I take great exception to comments about small towns being full of inestuous relationships, and conformist ideas. I am the product of a smalltown and still live in one. I am however much different from most around me, but feel nothing but love, care and respect from the people in this community. People know you and respect your differeces, because they care. I think that is what 'Small Town values' are to me.

[Alli {Mrs. Fussypants}]

Brilliant as usual. Off to Stumble!

[Megan]

Crunchy Carpets- So would you suggest that there is no place for talk of small town values in today's politics? Both sides seem intent on talking about it and I'm trying to put my finger on why. Help me out, woman!

BTW, I do agree with the difficult nature of living in small towns regarding the rumor mill, etc. But I had to stop typing somewhere and focus for once. Maybe not covering every freaking angle of the discussion will leave room for comments. ;)

[threeboys1mommy]

As soon as I read the first paragraph I thought about that very clip. Beautifully written. I tend to agree with the gentleman in the interview, fishing is a small town value.

[SciFi Dad]

I grew up decidedly *not* small town. My city was not huge like the major urban centres in the US, but it had over 200,000 people in it at the time. (This is for context; not to imply anything about small vs not small towns.)

Without putting too fine a point on it, I agree with your analogy. Small town values involves, effectively, maintaining people as, well, *people*.

Life in a larger city is different than a small town: people are numbers, not faces; they are "the guy next door" instead of "my neighbour"; they "get in the way" instead of "run into us".

In short, small town values ensure that nobody gets left behind, that we are all part of a singular community. People watch out for one another, and take care of one another, as opposed to worrying only about themselves.

[Annie]

Can't put my finger on it either - I have never lived in a small town - have always been a big town or a city kind of person.

For me - watching this political dance play out - it seems that 'small town values' are equated with values period, and unless you're from a small town - you can't possibly be as virtuous or compassionate or as clued into the grassroots as someone who is? I disagree. Not sure if that makes much sense.

Your post has a startling reminder for me though. I am very caught up in everything political right now. Time to switch off this computer - and give 100% to my kids for a while, thank you.

[Robin (PENSIEVE)]

"It's easy to miss those details when you aren't even looking at them."

Every mama who blogs should have winced on that line and said, "O u c h!". I've been guilty of that more than once.

I grew up in "Mayberry"; the type place you could walk to anywhere you needed to and not have to look over you shoulder. I wish my children could walk to Five Points to buy a hundred piece of penny candy for $1.03.

You've articulated a slice of Americana not everyone will "know", but everyone can appreciate.

Bravo.

[Christina]

Very well said!
I am not the product of a small town and it is easy to feel somewhat put out my the raging talk of small town values and the sometimes implication as Annie said that NOT growing up in a small town means you don't have values. But then, often times values is equated with religion too (my poor godless, big city living kids are real evil monsters people!) :-)
HOWEVER, in all things there are many sides and I really like the way you just described it. I can certainly see where living in a small town keeps you much more connected to everyday life around you and the people you share it with. Which is actually something you can duplicate no matter where you live.

[flutter]

listen to your gut.

[Headless Mom]

I've lived in both and would gladly give up the anonymity and freeways for knowing my neighbors and every kid/parent at the school, what kind of car they drive, and who their mama is ANY DAY!

Wasn't America built on those kind of communities-the ones that knew one another and helped each other out of love? Rather than the "all about ME" society that we live in today?

[jeanie]

Beautifully written.

However, I do have to stick up a bit for what (I think) Crunchy Carpets was trying to say.

Small towns are not ideal - in the same way that "the battlers" in my own country's politics are a rallying cry and are not as all encompassingly perfect as our imaginations would like them to be.

I grew up in the country, so small town is actually far more urban than my childhood but far more rural than my adulthood - so from either end of the spectrum you see the bonuses AS WELL as the cracks and fissures.

The beauty of your post is that it is not about that - it is about stripping back even the layers of that and taking time out to stop and smell the roses. Taking a step back from all civilisations and actually having time for thought before action, making every decision count and be for the right reasons rather than because you have to choose right now in this fast paced world.

[crunchy carpets]

I still question the Republicans 'small town' values...vs ..real values???

It does seem to be white christian and well yeah..Mayberry.

It is like my Great Aunt..she grew up on a farm and lived in a small town in England...you know, thatched roofs the works.

I loved it.

I wished I could live on a farm..being a city girl.

She had NO romantic views of farming at all.

She saw it for what it was.

The Republican tickets seems to be based on an America that never existed except on tv and in movies.

And it doesn't seem to have much room for people of other religions or colour.

Plus...what is happening to small towns nowadays?

Unemployment, Wal Mart.

I don't see them talking about 'taking care of their own'...

Unless it means ignoring the rest of the world.

I think people really need to think of what these values really imply...and if it is a good or feasible thing or not.

does that make any sense???

[cagey]

Great post! It brought back so many sweet memories from my own small town experiences as a kid(1st town, population of 1000, the 2nd town, population of 2000).

Then, I read Crunchy Carpets' comment and burst out laughing. Thanks for the dose of reality! Then, I remembered that really what I was missing was living in the COUNTRY, not living in small towns. Then, I remembered why I high-tailed it out of that last small town a month after graduation and never looked back.

I am sure there are some nice small towns out there, I just have not seen too many of them. I do think the concept is idealized and this post reminded me of how easy it is fall in that trap.

Great post - the kind that makes a person think. Megan, you give bloggers a good name. :-)

[MommyTime]

The Republican tickets seems to be based on an America that never existed except on tv and in movies.

I think this point of Crunchy Carpet's is right on. While there are many things I lament about the fact that, even in the relatively small town I live in right now, we DON'T all know each other, and people aren't that neighborly, I also wonder if I have a nostalgia for an image that was never really there. That is not to say that your lyrical descriptions of the value of small town life are inaccurate, Megan. Not at all. Only that I think the reader above who mentioned that while your sense of closeness, neighborliness, and the importance of people is a completely accurate assessment of small-town life, those come also with the *potential* (note, I do not say inevitable) consequence of insularity and/or feeling stifled by the fact that everyone knows everything about one. Which leads me to remember that nostalgia for that "simpler time" of the "pastoral rural existence" has been a longing in city dwellers AT LEAST since the 1840s. And it's always been a golden-glowing-sunset-over-the-fields kind of picture that washes away the hardships of a life away from cities.

I am not in the least suggesting that small towns do not have wonderful aspects of life (in fact, I often wish I lived in one). But I do think that it is easy to get grass-is-greener and forget that there are difficulties in every mode of living.

And I, too, resent the politicians' implication that people outside of small towns have no values, which to me smacks of the same condescension as suggestion that "values voters" necessarily choose a Republican ticket, as if anyone who chooses otherwise has no values rather than simply different ones.

And this post-worth of comments is really all to say: you are a beautiful writer who always makes me think, and for that I am grateful.

[Dorothy Stahlnecker]

I grew up in the town of Wheatfield in Western New York; in the 50's and 60's.. I swore I'd never want to move back...I was wrong. Your lives are different...and I miss the enviornment and slower lifestyle.

Today small towns..are harder to find fading into bigger suburbs..

Great post, filled with many roads and thoughts to conquer.

Dorothy from grammology

[JCK]

I loved this post, Megan. You wrote from your heart and it shows.

[Megan]

Ah, so this is what happens if I don't turn each post into a novel, covering every angle of every argument? Ya'll actually discuss stuff! ;)

For length and focus purposes (something new I'm trying out), this post could not be about the pros and cons of small town life vs urban life. However, for the record, all of the cons you are discussing are some of the reasons we eventually moved away from that small town. So yeah, I understand and agree.

However, this post is not as black and white as small town vs. urban living.

Most importantly, it is not about Republican vs. Democrat. I truly hope you got that, because although I made a choice not to spell it out, it is integral to the spirit of what I was trying to say that you understand that this is not about political affiliation.

There are countless incredibly liberal small towns in America. So this absolutely goes well beyond that.

"Small town" does not have to equal insulated, backwards, and antiquated. "Urban" does not have to equal noisy, impersonal, and dangerous.

So I return to my question, given that America is built on small towns, grows from small towns, depends on small towns: What are small town values?

And this can absolutely apply to Canada or Ireland or Iraq.

Keep discussing. Just bear in mind that this post is about the core of something, not the subjective details of the pros and cons of political party or lifestyle choice. I have expressed a definitive preference for neither, but am choosing to examine one in particular at this moment in time and space.

[Krista]

Very well written. I think I have to agree with SciFi dad. The value of small town living is truly looking out for each other - and you can because you know each other. Sure there's the gossip and it's hard to be very private, but we are pretty much community creatures. (or we say we want to be a global community...)
Let's just say this. I grew up in a VERY small town. Then I moved to a slightly bigger town. Then I went to college and after college moved to a big city (Seattle). Now I live in a small-ish town (50,000 greater area) near the smaller town where I used to live. People here do look out for each other.
I lived in Seattle for a year and never even met my neighbors.
Maybe part of it is that life just goes at a slightly slower pace in smaller towns. so you have time to stop and talk to your neighbors since you don't have a 3 hour a day commute.
Yeah, I'll stop rambling now!

[slynnro]

I grew up in a very small town (1200), and let's just my associations with small town values? NOT THE SAME.

An unfortunately large number of people in my small town live up to so many of the negative stereotypes- homophobia, racism, partisan inability to consider the "other side."

I see your point about being more concerned with family, and slow paces, and all that. I miss the sense of community and the knowing everyone, and people in small towns do legitimately care about well, everyone else in their small town.

But you take the good with the bad, unfortunately. And I could never live in a small town again for fear of reliving what I know to be true about some small towns all over again. Occasionally, I romanticize the idea of moving back there, but I know the reality is that could NEVER WORK. I know my experience isn't representative of every small town experience, but I'm just being opposite girl here...or something.

[apathy lounge]

I've never lived in a small town, but I can appreciate what you're saying.

[Ashley]

I just found your blog through a link someone left on Amalah's website and I am glad that I did. Your writing is addictive and fantastic.

[Julie]

I agree with slynnro, you most definetly take the good with the bad in any given situation. And Megan, how thought provoking are you lady? Touched a cord I think. But the point you made about 'Small town values' is as easy to define as love to a toddler, obviously you were right because we all have our own definitions. So it makes the case that different speach writers can use words or terms that are vague and obtuse, and can paint a different picture in all of our mindseyes. That is why they get the big bucks! :)

[Missives From Suburbia]

Oh, Megan... this ignited my brain in a way that nothing else I've read this week has managed to do! As a big city girl, it gave me the urge to write about the connected buzz of a big city, how you can feel the people's hearts around you palpating beneath your feet and how standing still on a surging sidewalk makes you feel the pulse of humanity in way that you cannot on a still, suburban or urban road.

You know what I concluded in the 40 seconds that my brain raced? Small town values and big city values aren't all that different. For both, life is about family, friends, community and making a living. There are nuances to both sides, naturally (because you can only farm in a small town, and you can only be a Wall Street banker in a big city), but my gut tells me only the pace is different. And the pace of life was what I took away from your brilliant post. Pace -- whether in a big city or small -- is what helps you see really those things right before your eyes, and perhaps it's time for all of us to pace ourselves a little better, no matter where we live.

[Julie Gribble]

So where in southern Illinois did you call home? I was born and raised in southern Illinois and still live here. My county does not have any stoplights either, but we do have a few flashing lights.
O, great post. We do have a special attachment to family values around here too.

[Bunnie]

That was simply beautiful and probably exactly what I needed to remember. Thanks you.

[blogversary]

I live near S. Ill. I get the small town thing.

Small town values are about living in the now. Work and food on the table comes first. Community and church are one. Family and fun are not separated. School is relief from the work of the summer.
Luxuries are for special holidays and that only a every few years. Experience is to be revered and respected. Dreams sometimes come true.

[thatgirlblogs]

you lost me when you invited me to turn off the TV... ;)

[Wendy]

I think you have a valid point about "small town" attitudes (of taking care of each other), and I know that from my husband who grew up in a small town and treats people that way here in the city (and those people are shocked by him). However, I think the politicians are using the phrase to serve their own purposes, get votes, and not really to mean what you and I think about it.

BTW, love your title!

[My Baby Pajamas]

I just found your website. I love it and I love the post! My husband and I were just talking about this "small town values". It's funny how some things change when you have kids and you have to think of their future and not be selfish and just think of yourself. We live in a large populated area and wish I could raise my kids with "small town values". And I don't mean skipping down the dirt road and humming Andy Griffith. I mean knowing respect for the eldery, knowing right from wrong, knowing family comes first... the list could go on. I know that this is my job as my boys parent but where I live I don't think the other parents realize it's their job with their kids. Some kids nowadays get lost in the shuffle and it's sad to see. The children are our future.