by Curt Kovener 
Small towns are where everyone knows your business whether you want them to or not. And there are other telltale signs that you are from a small town…
•You can name everyone you graduated with.
•You get a whiff of manure and think of home.
•You said the ‘f’ word and your parents knew within the hour.
•You schedule parties around the schedule of different police officers, since you know which ones will bust you and which ones won’t.
•Almost everyone in your school also has a cousin in your school.
•It was cool to date someone from the neighboring town.
•You have ever gone for a walk in the cemetery, on a date.
•Whenever you decided to walk to school for exercise, twenty cars pulled over and offered you a lift.
•You could set your bookbag out in the hall at lunchtime and it would still be there when you came out of the cafeteria.
•There were three generations of your family in the same bleacher row at every home game.
•You know all the old veterans carrying the flags in the festival parade.
•For that matter, you know everybody in the festival parade.
•Your only newspaper was a weekly.
•The mini-mall you now shop at has more stores than your entire home town.
•Loitering isn’t a bad thing, it’s the only thing.
•The Shell station and Subway are the only franchised businesses in town.
•You refer to THE stop light.
•You don’t give directions by street names or house numbers, but by references (“Turn right by library, go past the VFW, and it’s the fourth house on the left past the stop sign.)
•You call lunch-dinner; and dinner-supper.
