Excellent article. Growing up in "Bugtussle" myself, although his hometown is a metropolis compared to my hometown, I can relate -- well, except for the no drinking or smoking part ... and maybe meeting up with the Baptist Group ... but beside that, I can relate. Oh... and the "dry county" thing...why...that's just un-American.
Sheesh, thinking back, we used to play some pretty bloody basketball games with the parish priest and an auxiliary Bishop from the Green Bay diocese, who complained that I was always planting elbows in him. I'd tell him I'd stop if he stopped crashing the lane. Talked with the priest a few years back, he brought up those bloody games and said, "Damn, you had boney elbows as a kid..." Again, small town stuff.
"Ted Thompson: I don't know that my family is different than anybody else's family. If you could gather all the chicks up and put them in one place, that would be easier for me to see my nephew and things like that. I think that would probably be preferable. ...
It's not so much the place, it's the people. It's your family and your friends, all the people that you've talked to. You grow up with them, and so what if I haven't seen them in 35 or 40 years. They're still the same people, you know? I think small towns foster that sort of attitude."