I would guess we are neighbors except you probably live on the Mississippi River side, and I'm right in the center of the state, bound by the Red River on one side, but some barge traffic there. In our entire parish (county, to the rest of the U.S.), there are no stop lights (only a few caution lights at intersections), and the only elevator I know of is in the courthouse, but it's often out of order.

I grew up on a little island up in Alaska. No police, no stores. We did have commissary that carried stuff the loggers would need, i.e., candy bars, soda's, bread. We had to write out a grocery order and mail it into Ketchikan (the closest city to us). Then on saturday, the mailboat would come with our groceries. We ordered clothes from a catalog. We had a two room school that taught lst thru 8th grade.

I've been to Moscow, Kansas!

When my kids were little we lived in a very small place. It wasn't incorporated so it isn't even considered a town. The population was around 50. There was a gas station/grocery store/post office all in one place. The grocery store only carried basic necessities. By the time we lived there the school was closed and the kids had a choice of going to school in two other smallish towns, one 12 miles away and one 15 miles away. Other than the grocery store there was one church and two grain elevators and that was it.

Your husband was right about this but on the upside if anything ever happens to you or yours , those same people are there. If they don't see you around in a day or two someone will usually phone or call on you to see if your alright. We live of 5 acres, while I was away having treatment this property grew grass and weeds like you wouldn't believe, badly needing slashing and cleaning up. Firebreaks needed redoing as well because summer was fast approaching. We were only new to the area and hardly knew anyone. As we drove into our street my DH was commenting how it would take him a week at least to clean up the over grown property and slash but when we turned into our drive it had already been done for us. People we didn't even know had been in during the week with their tractors and slashers etc and cleaned up the whole property so we wouldn't come home to a mess. With in a day or two of us arriving home people started turning up at the door with casseroles and sweet pies and such so I didn't have to worry about cooking while I recovered.
Living in small towns may have its moments but they are also the most caring of communities on the whole. Just recently i heard on the news that a woman was found dead in her lounge after 3 months. She lived alone and no one had noticed she wasn't around. Very sad. Think I'll put up with the gossip (mind you I am fairly boring in that I don't do anything interesting enough for people to gossip about anyway)

Maybe1day

This describes our town to a T.

once my aunt sent my sister a birthday card but it only had her name on the envelope - my sister received the card with no trouble.

The town where I grew up had a sign on the highway that had the name of the town on both sides. Everything in between was the town!

I thought I lived in a small town, but I guess ours is a good size. We have a stop light and our own highschool. I like this small town, we are within walking distances to anything you need if you can't drive to another town for something. Man, don't know if I could do your small....

I got a letter like that once. It just had my first name and the town name.