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Ha! That is crazy, I’m pretty confident I know exactly which town you’re referring to… and if so, you definitely know my hometown too, we bordered you, although you probably never thought about us much. In high school I found out there was a running joke one town over (not originating in your town, the other one) that “in [my town] even the black kids are white”, if that jogs your memory at all, lol.
We did have a quirky political environment, in some ways we were mega-liberal (possibly even more than in what I assume is your hometown) but in other ways we had some pretty ardent conservative streaks. It was a small and rather odd place, a lot of very good memories but also some not-so-good ones. We were extremely tight-knit, since everyone knew everyone else since either kindergarten or 3rd grade (depending on which side of town) which I think is (subconsciously) why we reacted how we did to Bin Laden getting taken out: the fact that one of our classmates’ dads had died in 9/11 made it feel more personal, like they had come after us and we had finally gotten revenge. Obviously there were some people who didn’t really care, but they just shut up for the day, lol. There were downsides to that kind of closed social environment for sure, and I knew some people (including friends) who fell on the wrong side of it, but the upsides were real too.
Small world indeed. I don’t suppose you grew up Catholic? If you did, there’s a high chance our families went to the same church.
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