Small Towns of the Past
I actually was born in Cleveland, OH, during it’s “big city” years. My parents had lived there since they were married (on the East Side, not too far from what is now named MLK Drive - yes, demographics are exactly what you might think).
And, yet, despite the now almost-exclusively Black character of the neighborhood, at that time, there were many White neighbors. And some Black ones. Almost all were working people, often in the steel mills and factories that were the major employers at that time (late 40s and early 50s).
In many respects, larger cities were not experienced as such; they were a collection of neighborhoods/boroughs. Natives didn’t say they were New Yorkers - they were from Brooklyn, Queens, or Manhattan.
In the Cleveland area, before the interstates made far-flung cities accessible with a short drive, moving out of the city meant that travel outside of your neighborhood was relatively rare. Most families didn’t have two cars; businesses needed to be viable with the population in the neighborhood.
Today, I live about 1/2 hour from the outskirts of Cleveland, a manageable drive. I have many of the advantages of a small city, with less worry about crime. My neighbors informally keep an eye out on the comings and goings of others; not in an intrusive way, just making sure that a temporarily vacant home is not targeted while its owners are out of town.
When I returned to regularly walking my dog, after breaking my arm, my neighbors noticed and commented. When I walk around the street, I notice small changes in the gardens and lawns (my neighbors have AWESOME gardens). The children and teens are polite and relatively quiet. Well, the boys next door sometimes play basketball outside our bedroom window, but it’s a small price to pay for knowing they aren’t wandering the streets getting into trouble.
Eventually, my parents moved to my mother’s hometown, Lakewood, OH, and we had the small town experience in a rather crowded bedroom community. You might know the nearest 25-50 neighbors along your block, at least to recognize on the street. A few you might socialize with. Your kids played with 10-15 of them regularly.
Neighbors might talk when they happened to be out for a walk, or returning from a short trip to the store. The younger neighbors might draw upon those neighbors for closer friendships or mutual support with childcare.
The biggest problems (then and now) occurred when people moved into an established neighborhood, and ignore the social and cultural norms, whether intentionally or not. What norms?
Poaching other women’s men - never fear, women have ways of getting back at offenders that involve some nasty shaming, isolation, and backstabbing.
Not enforcing control over children and pets - this is a standard, even now. White people always used to be relatively tolerant of 1 on 1 fights, as long as the participants were relatively equal in age and size, and no weapons were used. Your kids, and by extension the parents, were held responsible by social pressure not to vandalize, steal, or otherwise irritate the rest of the neighborhood. Most of the problems were solved at the local level. It’s when the issues were not able to be dealt with there, and local police/officials put their fingers on the scales of justice, that people started looking for other places to live.
It is not true that all the neighbors attended the same church, or, in fact, any at all. However, you were expected to keep the noise down if you chose to use your Sundays partying. They still might judge you, but they also judged their neighbors for not attending THEIR church (in some small towns, you can’t spit and not hit at least one bitsy church). However, they would unbend sufficiently to nod on the street when returning home after services.
When I was young, public intoxication was rare, drug use unknown (except for amphetamine use by dieters - you would recognize them, their drug use made them mega-bitches with immaculate houses). A few short years later, stumbling potheads were everywhere. More potent drugs weren’t that prevalent until sometime in the 70s/80s.
MOST of the stories about small towns focus on the extremely poor, hollowed-out leftover towns where the major employers, and many extended family members, have left for distant shores. They are NOT the norm.