I grew up in a town of about 900 people, so I know that small towns really are in their own little world. Having since lived in multiple major cities, you’d think the wildest things I’ve ever seen would have happened in the streets of Chicago or on the boardwalk in Venice Beach, but nothing can hold a candle to the shenanigans that go on in rural Michigan and Wisconsin, lol.Redditor official_biz prompted people to share their own small-town stories, asking, “What’s the most ‘small-town’ thing you’ve witnessed?” Reading through these tales had me LAUGHING, and honestly, it felt like the wholesome dose of hometown nostalgia I didn’t know I needed. These things could truly ONLY happen in a small town. Enjoy!1. “The traffic on the ‘main street’ of my town is so sparse that two drivers going opposite directions can stop and talk to each other for a few minutes without causing any problem.”
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2. “A woman walked into the DMV on a Friday, saw that there were three people ahead of her, and left to come back another time when they ‘weren’t so busy.'”
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3. “We have a village Facebook page. Every time the ice cream man drives into the village, the entire page goes ballistic. People send live updates of where the van is and which direction it’s heading. The ice cream man has started accepting DMs, so he knows which streets to go down.”
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4. “My graduating class was 22 kids.”
5. “My town had a squirrel festival where we unveiled a new squirrel bridge.”
6. “In my former small town, there was an older guy who’d lost his license after getting a few DUIs. Every day, he would ride his John Deere lawnmower to the corner bar around 3 p.m. and sit around watching TV and sipping his beer well into the night. Then he’d head the couple of miles back home on his mower. He even had a little canvas shell he put on when it rained or got too cold.”
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7. “My hometown got a McDonald’s in 1976. The town had a parade for it.”
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8. “The town I’m from has a single stoplight, and it’s only operational on Thursdays. Why? The driving exams are held on Thursdays, and they are legally required to include at least one stoplight on the exam route. So that stop light was literally installed so people can take their driving exams in our town.”
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9. “I’m from a town of less than 2,000 people. I no longer live there, but I recently got a call from my daughter. She had been stopped for speeding and handed over her license and insurance. The officer goes, ‘Hey, you’re Donnie’s granddaughter! I ain’t gonna write you a ticket, but I’m telling Donnie when I see him tomorrow ’cause we’re going fishing.’ She replied, ‘I think I’d rather have the ticket.'”
—u/BronxBelle
10. “I worked with a guy who was in his 70s, and a relative of the business owner. I asked the owner if my coworker was a local, and he said, ‘No. His parents moved here when he was 2.'”
—u/realneil
11. “I grew up in a small Missouri river town. There was a combination hair salon/live bait shop called ‘Perms & Worms.'”
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12. “A friend’s great aunt lived in a tiny town about 50 miles from the suburb we live in. We went to visit her once, and she had a newspaper lying out. I asked if I could read it, and they had a lost and found section. It read like this: ‘FOUND: A child’s left glove, green,’ and then listed an address. I couldn’t believe it.”
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13. “When a local bank was robbed, one of the tellers told the police to bring her a yearbook from about 10 years earlier, and that she would be able to point the robber out. He had been in the grade before hers in school.”
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14. “I lived in a small town. When I moved there, people would ask, ‘Whose house did you buy?'”
—u/MoonieNine
“My wife and I bought ‘the Baker place’ 20 years ago. It’s still the Baker place, lol.”
—u/ipsok
15. “My dogs got out while I was working. The police called my niece’s elementary school (she was in fifth grade) to get her to round them up and take them back home.”
—u/mediocrelpn
16. “My prom was in a barn. 🙃”
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17. “I left the grocery store and forgot a bag. Another customer brought it to my house.”
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18. “Our town drunk rode a horse everywhere. The guy would get so drunk he’d pass out still in the saddle, and the horse would take him home.”
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19. “In 1995, our county got its first ATM. It made the front page of the paper. 😂 “
20. “A known criminal with numerous arrests and convictions over his lifetime ran for sheriff. His campaign slogan was, ‘I know the jail inside and out!’ From what I recall, he was arrested at the polling station on Election Day for being drunk in public. Bert was a weird dude.”
21. “Where I grew up, if we called 911 after midnight, the operator would have us hold so she could wake up the sheriff.”
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22. “One spring, the front page of the local newspaper’s top headline was ‘Deer finds grass in [town name].’ The fact that someone had a picture of a deer who found some grass apparently meant that winter might finally be over, which is the big news that everyone cares about.”
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23. “A friend of mine posted a picture on Facebook a few months ago, tagging another friend: ‘Hey, Bubba, your pig got loose and is running around the Dollar General parking lot. Come get him!’ People were more surprised that they’d gotten themselves a Dollar General store than they were about Bubba’s pig.”
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24. “My baby lost a shoe at the grocery store. Several hours later, I went to work, and the shoe was there waiting there for me.”
—u/ll_bb_g
25. “My company sent a mechanic to a small town for several weeks to assemble a manufacturing machine. On his first day there, he went to the local cafe to get coffee and breakfast. There were several people in there drinking coffee, reading the newspaper, chatting, etc. He went in and sat at the counter. No one was there to wait on him. Finally, one of the guys said, ‘If you want coffee, you’ll have to get it yourself. They ain’t open yet.'”
—u/vapor713
26. “I lost my wallet, and went to the DMV to replace my license. The guy there asked me if I had any other ID, but I didn’t. He said, ‘You know, you look just like your daddy,” and issued me a new license anyway.”
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27. “I entered the general store in a small town, and the owner was playing billiards with some of the other men in town. I asked to buy a Coke, and the guy smiled from across the hall and told me to just take what I needed and leave some cash on the counter.”
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28. And finally, “Due to a traffic incident (unfortunate meeting with a large deer), we were stranded in a small town for several days. In that time, one of the local police officers gave us his number and said to call him anytime if we needed a lift somewhere. The manager at the hotel we stayed at offered us the same thing, and one of the hotel staff members flat-out offered us her car to use while she was at work. The irony was that it was such a small town that everything we needed was within walking distance. Every single person we met went out of their way to try to help us. Four years later, we still refer to this as the best bad experience we’ve ever had. In fact, two years ago, we went out of our way to swing through that small town again, and they remembered us! A small town will renew your faith in humanity.”
—u/philzar
Do you have any funny small-town stories? Tell me in the comments or use the anonymous form below! Your response may be featured in an upcoming BuzzFeed article!
Note: Responses have been edited for length/clarity.
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