You might live in a small town if ....

1) Your Post Office shares a building with someone else.

2) Your Post Office isn't made of rocks or bricks.

3) There are more dogs in your town than people.

4) Your town is not incorporated.

5) If your neighbor does a drive-by shooting of a stray dog.

6) If you cannot buy a cigarette or a pop.

7) If the job of Dog Catcher has not been established.

8) If you have no sales tax.

9) There are more pot holes in your town than people.

10) The only reason a law enforcement officer visits is to arrest someone for growing pot in their garden.

11) If your school has ever been taken over by another school district.

12) If the only bus that goes through your town is a school bus.

13) If you have no fire department, not even a volunteer department.

14) If your neighbor develops a junk yard in their front yard.

15) If a tipi qualifies as a viable housing structure.

16) If your Post Office doesn't have normal working hours.

17) If you have town meetings at the Post Office waiting for your mail.

18) If the closest thing you have to a food store is a Schwan Truck.

19) The evaluation of your house is just a bit more than your ten year old car.

20) Your town members have less than 5 homepages on the Internet.

21) If it takes a fire department more than 20 minutes to get to a fire.

22) If your house lives farther than 5 miles from a fire department.

23) If none of the houses in your town has fire insurance.

24) If a dog house counts as an inhabitant.

25) If your aerial view picture has farm land on all 4 sides.

26) In the history of your town, there has never been anyone arrested for speeding driving through or in the town.

27) All four wheel vehicles claim equal space on your streets.

28) No streets have street signs.

29) No houses are numbered, and the UPS man has to ask for help.

30) You have more septic tanks than you have telephones.

31) If it takes more than 3 hours for the high patrol to come to work an in-town auto accident.

32) Your neighbor raises and fights chickens.

33) Your town is used to dump dangerous materials in.

34) The IQ of your town delinquents averages below 70.

35) Your average household income falls well below poverty level.

36) Your school has no elementary students enrolled.

37) You live only off of your garden during the summer.

38) You can see plum down all of the streets in your town.

39) Your town is a poke and plum town: you poke your head in and you are plum out of town.

40) Yellow and white lines are omitted from all your streets to make them appear to be larger.

41) The only street lights in town are home owned.

42) As a policy, insurance companies do not insure your homes for fire insurance.

43) Any new face is considered either an intruder or a burglar.

44) Everyone knows how to pull their own water-pump and fix it.

45) You can't buy gasoline in your town.

46) You mow your yard less than twice in a year.

47) You can burn hazardous materials and get away with it.

48) You are the closest thing to a town police officer.

49) You can't get to your town unless you are going there.

50) You have never heard of building permits.

51) Your town does not officially exist on the state map.

52) Your town has never been mentioned by the local weather person.

53) If you have ever been told, "It must be like 'hell' living in your town."

54) Property evaluation tumbled even during boom times.

55) There are no curbs in your town.

56) Patching mudholes is considered as repaving project.

57) Web pages are associated with Spiderman Comics.

58) Everyone moves out of your town while no one moves in.

59) It is legal to burn buildings in your town.

60) The town has no historical society and seems to have no historical significance.

61) The only church in town has a tent revival that lasts 3 days, 18 hours a day with loud preaching and loud Gospel music. Who knows, maybe we need it.

62) People will drop off their excess dogs and cats, knowing they will survive.

63) During election year, you will see no election posters in the town.

64) You have to drive five miles away to vote in an election.

65) When the river floods, you only have one way out of town.

(You got any ideas, send them to me at the email below, and watch for more as I experience them.) :)

[Copyright '98 Dale Hill]