In rural America, we used to have more very small towns that were actual towns, with sidewalks, main streets, grocery stores, cafés, and cinemas. One of the pla

In rural America, we used to have more very small towns that were actual towns, with sidewalks, main streets, grocery stores, cafés, and cinemas. One of the places I lived used to be one, and I never would have known if the old folks wouldn’t randomly bring up the old bowling alley or something, and when I had no idea what they were talking about they would go on to explain that it used to be in some empty field maybe a quarter mile from my house. Most shocking one was when I was with someone who mentioned a town I’d never heard of. She said oh, it used to be just up the highway and brought me there. We went into a wooded area in the middle of a farm, and there were the remnants of wooden walkways everywhere (low elevation and frequent flooding). She showed me where the train station and the hotel had been, talked about the different shops and the amusement park that was owned by the local dentist. But that was all a long time ago. Now that whole area which used to contain multiple such communities is just farmland, loose clusters of houses, a plant, a gas station, and five of the ugliest churches you’ve ever laid eyes on. If you drive for half an hour you can go to Walmart or Taco Bell in the “small city” that used to be an actual small city.