Small towns
By Sissy15
@sissy15 (13515)
United States
September 7, 2026 12:26pm CST
My husband and I have been doing weekend drives lately. It's a nice way to get out and explore our area. I sometimes need a mental break from my life lately. I have had a lot going on, and it just seems to get worse and worse, so when I get a moment to take a breather, I genuinely enjoy it, and it helps me see the bigger picture of life. It's so easy to get caught up in all of the bad things happening right now, because there are a lot- probably more bad than good lately- but when I have a moment to just breathe and realize that it doesn't always have to be bad in the midst of the chaos, I really try to take those moments in.
Our favorite thing to do lately is explore small towns nearby that we had never heard of. We'll take a country road, and we'll see a road sign for some town we had never heard of, and we'll decide to check it out. We have found some cool little places this way. There are towns that have some neat little stores or restaurants.
We will also check out towns we have heard of but have never actually been to, apart from maybe passing through quickly on our way to another destination. Yesterday we were so amused when we came across a town called Malinta (we thought "Oh My Lanta"). I had never heard of it. It was a town a lot like the tiny town I grew up in. There wasn't a lot there, but they had a small bank and post office, and it looked like they had some sort of junk shop. It made me wonder how anyone ever stumbled into these towns, because clearly they don't get advertised. You never see houses in these places up for sale. It's just interesting to think about. We learned that this particular town also had a festival, which highly amused us. It didn't look big enough to have a festival.
I remember once we found this giant cemetery out in the middle of nowhere. The same place had a random car lot, and I couldn't help but think: how do people find this car lot for them to make any business? It was a decent-sized car lot too. It was literally in the middle of nowhere. I had lived not outrageously far from it my entire life without even knowing it existed. I am sure some people thought that way about my town that I grew up in, too. I feel like some families stay in a town their whole lives and just keep passing houses down to each other. I very rarely see houses up for sale in these small towns.
Some of the slightly bigger towns make more sense to me. They have a little more going on in them and have more restaurants and stores. You'll seldom find a big-box store in these towns, but that's what keeps them charming.
There's a town nearby that has a really old general store that sells all kinds of interesting things, including freshly jarred jams and sauces and old-fashioned candy. I love that store. The town has an antique shop, a little gift shop, a butcher, and a few really amazing restaurants. It's one of my favorite places to go. My husband and I have found some of the most amazing stores and restaurants in these small towns, and they aren't heavily advertised, so the only way to find them is by word of mouth and traveling and finding them. There's a 100-year-old bakery in a small town not outrageously far from us that I have been wanting to check out. My husband is diabetic, though, so there are a lot of things he can't regularly have, so we have had to be careful and avoid a lot of bakeries. My husband is getting his sugar more in check now, finally, but we still have a long way to go.
My son has had a cold all weekend, so we left him at home, and the two of us just went and found small towns and checked them out. It is probably one of my favorite things to do. It's amazing how you can live so near somewhere and not even know it exists. I have a few places on my list that I want to check out soon. I have been finding the names of small towns nearby and seeing what they have to offer. Sometimes they're little villages that only have a few houses, a church, and a post office, but other times they have more to offer. I have never lived in a small town that had much. I grew up in a small town where there was basically nothing there, but we still found fun with the neighborhood kids. Sometimes those small towns make for the best childhood memories.
6 people like this
6 responses
@RasmaSandra (101311)
• Daytona Beach, Florida
7 Sep
I love small towns and recently wrote about small towns in the states online,
2 people like this
@sissy15 (13515)
• United States
8 Sep
I also love them. I grew up in a very small town with a population of about 200 at the time, but my town didn't have much to do. We briefly had a carryout but it eventually went out of business. We had a small park, which was the local hangout for all of the kids; we had a church, a school, and a post office. The only thing the town still has is the park. The church became someone's home, the school became a cat rescue, the post office went back to being a home, which is what it was before it was a post office, and the old carryout was torn down; somehow, they still have a fertilizer plant, though. We used to ride our bikes to the next town over to go to the library; it was/is also a small town, but it was bigger than our town. The local elementary school used to take kids from the country and from three of the small towns in the area. I think growing up in a small town helped me appreciate them all the more.
2 people like this
@sissy15 (13515)
• United States
9 Sep
@RasmaSandra Thank you. I am lucky to have had the childhood I had, but growing up, I always wanted to live somewhere like NYC. I think people often want what they don't have. It's the whole grass is greener thing. It wasn't until I was older that I learned to appreciate what I had.
1 person likes this
@RasmaSandra (101311)
• Daytona Beach, Florida
8 Sep
@sissy15 you were lucky and it all sounds very nice, I was born and rised in NYC,
1 person likes this
@AmbiePam (128143)
• United States
7 Sep
I love meandering to explore what one comes across. One of my favorite small towns in Oklahoma is Amber. Yes, Amber. It is in the middle of nowhere, but has the best steakhouse in the state. It’s really a charming little dot on the map that has a hidden gem of a restaurant.
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@sissy15 (13515)
• United States
8 Sep
I remember we were out driving one day, and we came across this incredibly random town. It didn't have much. It had maybe a strip of houses and a local bar/grill (ironically, more than my current town has, and it's more populated). You could just tell it was an old railroad town. I can't remember the name of it or it's exact location but I need to find it again so I can get the history of it. That's one of my favorite things to do. I find small towns, and then I try to find the history. A lot of these towns were booming at one time. Back when they had oil, or the ones that were next to train tracks used to have a lot going on. We had these neighbors who were much older who remembered our town when it was bigger and had more going on. She would talk about the stores and restaurants, and I was trying to picture it, because the town was never like that when I lived there, and it has even less now than it did when I was a kid.
Our local museum does this thing where they go out to areas that used to be local towns that have since become unincorporated and talk about the history of them. It's one of my favorite things they do. There were a couple of towns that existed that no longer have anything in them. It's kind of sad to think about how entire towns became nothing. There are a few that have a couple of houses left, but there's nothing else there. My current town used to have a rail car that traveled through all of the smaller towns before they put in the highway. I have a picture of it somewhere. It's always sad to see when once-booming towns have nothing left. Once in a while, I will find a random restaurant in these towns, and the food is usually good. I always wonder how they stay in business if no one has heard of them. Hopefully the steakhouse you mentioned continues to get good business. I'm always sad to see places lose their restaurants and stores, especially if that's all they have left.
2 people like this
@sissy15 (13515)
• United States
9 Sep
Where I live, we have a lot of farmland. There are a ton of corn and bean fields between each town and city. You could drive for hours and see more corn than you see towns and cities. It's fun to be able to find the towns, though. I always wonder how I didn't know about some of them when I've lived near a lot of them my entire life.
1 person likes this
@sissy15 (13515)
• United States
8 Sep
Thank you, and It's not pronounced the same as My Lanta, but I was highly amused. My husband's sugar is still a work in progress, but it's much lower than it was when he was hospitalized. My son still has his cold, but it isn't as bad as it was, at least for the time being.
2 people like this
