I’ve lived both in a small town (population 850) and a large city (population 460,00 and part of a metro area of 3,600,000) and while both have aspects to recommend them, I’ve come to find that small-town life has its advantages. . .

A small town has no traffic problems. I live 22 miles from where I work, and I spend an hour and a half each day just driving to and from.

A small town is full of great people that are your neighbors for life. I have lived in the same house for 13 years, and I do not know a single neighbor by name. It’s not that we’re all unfriendly, it’s just that in a larger city, people tend to keep to themselves.

There’s too much crime in a big city, so much of it that we are desensitized to it. The bank inside the grocery store two blocks from my house has been robbed at gunpoint half a dozen times in the past five years-and I live in a “good” part of town. The last time it happened, I went in to pick up a gallon of milk and saw the crime scene tape. When I asked an employee what occurred, he just shrugged and said, “Oh, someone robbed the bank again.” My response? I rolled my eyes, grabbed my cart and went on into the store.

In a small town, everyone is in your business, and when you live in a small town, this does not seem like a good thing. I remember one time my brothers and I swiped a few apples from old Mr. Matheny’s tree on the other side of town. When we arrived home, my mother was at the door with her wooden spoon, ready to mete out punishment. Mr. Matheny had seen us, knew who we were and called our parents.
In the area I live in now, the head of the “block watch” (by the way, small towns don’t need block watch-they have a town watch!) got cussed out by the parent of a kid caught vandalizing, for “scaring” the poor boy.
In a small town, when you see a kid doing something wrong, you tell his parents. In a big town, you look the other way, because the parent is likely worse than the kid.

In a small town, church is important. I attend a mega-church, simply out of convenience. It is a decent church, with a good message, but it has the same problem as my neighborhood. I’ve been attending for about eight years, but I do not know anyone there by name.
In a small town, your church is not only a worship center, it is a place of social meetings, of belonging. A person can be baptized, get married and have their funeral all in the same church, surrounded by people they know and love.

Small towns have better schools. The school my son attends has over 850 students, K through 5. Much of the teacher’s time is spent disciplining kids, or trying to teach children that do not speak English fluently, leaving the rest of the class to learn on their own. Teachers don’t stay long at the big schools. In a small town, the teachers tend to stick around. They know the kids before they even hit the classroom. They’ve taught brothers and sisters, they know the community.

The big cities all have a thriving arts scene and plenty to do: museums, theater, zoos, concert venues and more. However, the cost of attending anything like that is exorbitant, between parking and ticket prices, and the longer I live in a metro area, the less I find myself going out of the way to attend such things. There may not have fancy galleries and concerts in a small town, but there are parades and carnivals and county fairs and family-oriented things worth going to, and when you do, you’ll know everyone there.

If you live in a small town, and you feel bored or that your neighbors are too nosy, rejoice! You defintely have the better end of the deal.