LogFAQs > #882197588

MrZAP17 posted...

Your hometown sounds terrible. My condolences.

It has its problems -- it's not all bad, but I'll harp on what's wrong with this small town for a minute.

There was lots of fighting growing up for me and other people I didn't get close with, which lines up with some stats I learned as an adult. For example, Tennessee often has one of the highest percentages of violent crimes in the country. It's also a testament of the lack of child care services in the local area for those who have been abused. The school system can only do so much as well, considering we were one of the five worst counties for education at a time when Tennessee was 49th in the nation (not saying I wholly valued education at the time either -- I was 39th in a class of 77, so I was 100% down the middle there).

To get into the economy and politics of the area, we had our big business leave for Mexico in the 1990s after NAFTA. This drove our county up to like 33% unemployment at one point -- something outrageous like that. This is probably the reason why our county supported Donald Trump more than any other county in the Republican primary last year -- he was openly against the TPP and NAFTA. His aggression and IMHO bigotry didn't hurt either, but the area sincerely does have a desperation for jobs now that was previously hurt by past policies.

Of course, much like the rest of the South, this is a rural Bible Belt-area. Feel how you want on that, but I'll say this: while I often have my negative feelings on churches in certain ways, every pastor and their family I knew here was super nice and into the sports I played. We got along fine outside of church -- I just didn't deal with them in church past when I was like ten years old, so I won't say much more here.

Drugs are a problem all through-out the nation and Tennessee, but I recently learned we now have more pain clinics than Starbucks. Not sure how this problem looked in my childhood, but pills have been a known problem for many years in this county. Also, if I remember right, our region of the state has some of the highest rates of alcoholism.

We used to be more of a tourist spot too, but that's declined now with competition.


Anyway, it's a beautiful area and a good place to retire at with plenty of nice people to be found, but I don't think of it as a good place for kids to grow up. If I didn't have family still there, I wouldn't have much business there as an adult either.
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