Growing Up In Rural Florida

---

Jacksonville only has one famous sports team, the Jacksonville Jaguars. But the fans for the Jags make up for the lack of other huge professional teams. The exhilarating spirit all Jags fans have is remarkable. We all know the Jaguars are not the greatest at football, but that has never stopped a Jaguar fan from watching every single game and keeping that spirit high!

Being from Jacksonville, the farthest a vacation spot is from me is about six hours, which is Key West. While trekking down there, you cross Orlando, Tampa and Miami. And right next door to Jacksonville is the historic town of St. Augustine, the oldest city in the country. Florida not only has a grand history, but also has beautiful vacation spots and exhilarating theme parks. On the other hand, Jacksonville is not a perfect place.

Due to having an area of square miles the biggest city in the nation to go anywhere is a trek. Generally speaking, to get anywhere it is at least a minute drive, which does not seem like much, but it can really add up over time.

You cannot walk anywhere; you definitely need a car. Also, since it is such a family-oriented town, it leaves the youngsters with not too much to do. There are just a few clubs, bars along the beach and fancy restaurants to keep us all occupied. In fact, a couple scenes were filmed in my hometown. I know, i was there but very very young the day they filmed it! You hear this alot about Americans, but here's why. We adventured in the woods, the fields, roamed and played and explored in the outdoors.

Dirt, mud, grass, trees, fields, fences, livestock, ponds, creeks, rivers, etc We learn them early, some as early as 6 years old 8 years old in my case. They weren't locked up, but never took them out without permission. We were taught safety and respect. To us Rural Americans, a firearm is no more scary or evil than a hammer, a bow, a hatchet, or a pocket knife. A tool for a job, be it target shooting knife throwing, tomahawk throwing, archery , pest control squirrel hunting , and the like.

Tractors and pickup trucks. It's not uncommon for a Rural american child to learn how to drive one of these at full speed, by the time they are Driving a truck around the farm is usually done from the time a child is large enough to reach the pedals, and see over the dashboard.

Same for lawn mowers. Mudding, racing, and trail riding were a staple of my adolescence, as was assising my dad with mowing our 3-acre lawn. Same for working on vehicles and repairing them. Helping dad with fixing machinery of all sorts started as soon as I could pick up a wrench and 'help'. If you didn't get chased by a Sheriff deputy on your dirt bike or quad at least once Wild animals - birds, insects, frogs, lizards, snakes, turtles, fish, deer, owls, coyotes, foxes - and in some areas bears and cougars.

Children learn to care for, identify, and respect all different forms of life - their various needs and habits, or dangers. I was feeding cows from the time I was big enough to pick up a bucket. Many kids also raise livestock to show at county and state fairs, usually one or a small batch of prize animals - which can be an immense sense of pride and accomplishment for young people, when they win. With so few cars, and so few artificial lights, most rural people have very good natural night vision.

To this day, I can walk around outside at night, without a flashlight or anything. Country people know that you see more without that light, than with it. It's like the movies, except far more grand. One of my fondest memories as a small child was taking a blanket outside and just laying down after dusk, listening to nature and watching the sky.

Trees, grasses, bushes, weeds. Gardening is not the same thing to us, as it is to city-dwellers. Flowers are for flower beds, not gardens. My family simply farmed hay for cattle or sometimes kept cattle on our property , we didn't farm crops. Still, you learn about them, and you learn about all kinds of cultivation of various edibles. Here's just a small list of what we grew in our 1-to-3 acre garden over the years.

I know there's more, but that's all I can think of, off the top of my head. Then theres the non-edible trees that can be used for lumber and such. Planting, weeding, and harvesting in the garden are also seasonal childhood chores. Not a small campfire. A fire big enough for tons of people to gather around.

Slideshows

It's become such a yearly event for my family to host the annual autumn cookout for their entire church congregation. Most of them are from the city, and some drive an hour or more to attend - and it's nearly universally considered the highlight of the year for everyone. Smaller wiener roasts are common, and camping out is often a thing. It's awesome to go camping, yet never be more than a hundred yards from home.

If a vehicle drives by, you know who it is You wave at them, even if you don't necessarily know them. It's the unwritten code of who's friendly, and who isn't. In fact, if when passing neighbors, it's considered rude NOT to wave, unless you're really busy doing something. Those who regularly don't do this are considered snobbish, pretentious, and stuck up - like "oh, you're too good to wave at me, okay. Certain behavior, or cars parked at neighbor's places when they shouldn't be, would go unnoticed in the city. Yet they are keenly observed and watched in the country. We're also usually on quite friendly sometimes first-name terms with the Sheriff and his deputies.

This is just a small list of things. If it sounds busy - honestly, it is. Rural kids, at least around my area, didn't get into a ton of trouble. They had plenty of fun things to do, and it kept us out of trouble. You could go, play, do, and explore however we wanted - and the only real restrictions were to respect the land, respect others' property, and be home in time for supper. I grew up in a smaller town, but not small -- more like 10, However, my mother was from a much more rural upbringing, and both of her parents families were rural farmers from South Dakota.

So I feel I can answer this accurately We lived "in town" and would ride our bikes everywhere. To the one playground, or library, or down to the river. We'd go fishing, build forts in the woods with sticks and found lumber. Our yard was huge, so we learned about gardening, and had friends over to play kick ball a lot. Lots of outdoor activities like dirt biking, ATVs, or snowmobile in the winter.

View these other slideshows:

Burning things -- seriously. Almost every gathering involves an outdoor fire. Sometimes it was the whole instigator for a gathering. Lots of TV and internet now in the winter, too. You knew everyone at least by face or name in my experience. In even smaller towns my mom's family experience Class sizes would be graduates in a single year, and frequently that would include a cousin or two.

They'd have to take a bus into town, and usually it was the nearest "big" town that has the school. So if you're from a pop. Students at your school could easily be from a 50 mile radius, just so the school has enough students to justify being open. This is also another reason some rural families will choose to homeschool. Not something I'm familiar with personally.

Lots of the trades: And of course farmers, teachers, bartenders, restaurant owners. Some folks will live waaay out, but commute hours into a larger town. So you'll have some office workers, too. They usually work for a local government town, county or state. A little while back, and still today: You'll get introduced at a party, and go from there. Or maybe the local bar and again by local, I mean the one in the next town over -- miles away. Didn't plan on it, necessarily, but a Minneapolis boy snuck in to one of those parties hosted by a friend We've been together 9 years now, married and living in the city.

I love it, and don't think I could ever go back. I have a question for you OP: You're asking about America, but the U. I wouldn't expect the general experience to be too much different, except for the greater ease of access to cities in the U. OK, a bit more I grew up in the country but about 10 miles from a city of , until I was about It was fun - there were a few other kids within a mile, and we had a big 10 acre field.

So, lots of outdoor stuff - building bike ramps, climbing trees, driving the go-kart, hacking trails through the woods with a machete, burning things, building model rockets, etc. Just the normal outdoor kid stuff. When I was 12, we moved further in - so, riding bikes to friends houses, playing video games, etc. Once I was 16 or had friends who were 16, we could go wherever we wanted. The difference with the UK is that it is so much smaller and densely populated.

You are never more than an hour usually much less away from a city. Therefore the young people can easily travel there for recreational activities. Many of the smaller villages are today what we would call commuter towns where the residents travel to cities for work. Local residents in many villages also resent wealthy city people buying up the properties as weekend or holiday homes, and pushing prices up.

I know this happens in the USA too, but many places I would think are simply too far away from cities for this. I grew up outside of a town with a total population of maybe The entire town fit within one square mile and had one stoplight in the center of town. Overall, life isn't much different than more urbanized areas, I still have high speed Internet and access to any product someone can buy in the city, as long as I don't mind driving to go get it. Drugs and poverty are definitely an issue, but the cost of living is so much lower out here that being in the working poor isn't as dangerous as it is in a city.

The unique part of where I live is that I am located very close to the northeastern American megalopolis, a continuous stretch of urban land from Boston to D. School wasn't too bad, my County had 1 high-school, 2 middle schools and 3 elementary schools.

Jacksonville, FL might just be the best place to grow up in the country

My highschool graduating class was about It was pretty common to know just about everyone in school. Education really wasn't much different than a more urban area, we were still prepped for college and a fair portion of my class went off to college. For work, people either commute to a city for work, work on their farm, or have some low paying labor job that's local. Bottom line is if you want to make any decent amount of money you have to travel to do it. Making friends or finding romantic partners is mostly based around who you meet in school.

Many people, myself included, met their significant other while in school. As far as entertainment goes, it's the same as work.

This is the big reason why there's a big heroin problem here, it's easier and cheaper to shoot up. Even with all the downsides, I'd still want to raise my children in a place like this. It's hard to explain, but I feel that the way of life is more beneficial to their development than somewhere else. It really does take a village to raise a child and I'd feel much better about letting my kid have a less restricted life if they were raised out here.

I may not plan to live exactly where I am now, but I'd like to live somewhere similar. I don't know when 10k became a "small town", but thank you for representing an actually small town. I grew up with around 1k, but I worked with people and visited places with fewer than I had a manager with a graduating class of 8.

It beats me haha, it just bothers me people try to romantisize it. I mean, yeah I like it out here, but it's not for everyone, otherwise it wouldn't be rural. When I was In college, people would try to talk up how "country" their hometown was, apparently having a backyard is rural now.

Depends on what brand of rural, I'd imagine. I grew up in and recently moved back to the mountains of California. I spent ages in rural Florida, moved to the Florida Keys a chain of small tropical islands from ages , and lived back in the same rural area from ages The difference was pretty staggering at the time. The keys aren't an especially urban area, but they are a vastly more wealthy area.

Welcome to Reddit,

Property down there is almost all in the millions we lived on a houseboat, which is how we afforded to be there , and the whole place is tiny islands, so it's condensed like an urban city even though theres only a few thousand people. In a rural area, you're isolated as a kid.

I had at most one friend who I saw regularly at home, because there wasn't anyone else in my age range who lived within several miles. Taking the bus to and from school was an hour long commute, twice a day. The nearest town was ten miles away. If you weren't getting driven there by your parents, you weren't going anywhere unless you had your own car. That means no afterschool shopping, activities and sports limited by who can give you rides, and "hanging out" has to be scheduled, not spontaneous.

It's easier as a teen because more of your friends have access to their own vehicles. When I moved to the keys, I found out that I was a little bit culturally retarded compared to my peers, as well. I was 9 years old. All my friends were watching south park, learning how to curse, and exploring their sexuality. I didn't know anything about sex, was afraid to swear, and wasn't familiar with any popular TV or music because before we moved, we didn't have cable.

Kids and adults in my old town were mostly deeply religious while people in my new town were either atheists, agnostic, or just went to church on Christmas and didn't think about it otherwise. People in my old town were poor - people in my new town were very prejudiced towards the poor, especially toward Cuban immigrants. It was a big change.

Going back was easier than it had been going forward, but also more disappointing. There's good things about living in the country, but there's no getting around the fact that it really limits your experiences and opportunities. I know the Florida Keys. Where on the islands were you?

Want to add to the discussion?

Marathon Key, for the most part. We lived on a dock outside a lobster fishery. My dad worked in Key West at the time. I was last in the Keys in My dad was into sport fishing so we went to the Keys a few times. We used to fly in to Miami, hire a car and drive down. We did go down to Key West one year I think Thanks for the responses everyone. It seems like my ideas I had about it from my time spent in the USA are partly correct. It sounds like a great way life to me.

Although I grew up in a city, I have always been more drawn towards a rural life. Went to school in a town of It was a rural school district, so it wasn't really a tiny school. My graduating class had 52 students. I didn't live in town though, so most of my childhood was spent on my parent's property 22 acres riding ATVs, fishing, and other things. I had two older brothers and we built a lot of forts in the summer. My dad is a mechanic, so I spent a lot of my time working on cars and trucks.

When I got older and had my own car, we'd go to the local "city", population 13,, and hang out. Kids from the other small towns in the area did the same. We'd cruise up and down Main Street and hang out in different parking lots or at the bowling alley, that's how we made friends and met girls. As you can imagine the schools had very few resources and were always struggling. We pretty much only had the basic classes needed for a minimum education, not much in the way of extras, though we were lucky to have enough money to maintain a school band and a football team.

Money was spent on athletics but as a nerdy kid myself, I was sad to miss out on things like language classes, an art program, theater, and the like. Outside school, I lived in town and most of my peers lived out on farms in the country, so there weren't a lot of kids I could play with when I was very young parents were understandably too busy with work to be driving everywhere. I went to the places I could go within walking distance, which since there's basically zero to do in such a small town, pretty much meant staying at home or occasionally playing with my cousins or visiting other relatives.

Once in a while I would get to visit the park or library as a treat. Anything more exciting than that -- movies, restaurants, even grocery shopping, all of it was at least a half hour drive away and often more. Those would pretty much be a "once a month treat on the weekend" kind of thing. Oh yes, and as mentioned by other commenters, teenagers who wanted to go out pretty much had nothing to do except drive out into the middle of nowhere on the country roads and drink or get high. Meth is a huge problem around here. As a kid, I read a lot of books. A lot of books. Also played a lot of video games.

Late in my elementary school days the internet started to become a big thing and then I migrated there to spend most of my time. There are very, very few jobs available in this rural area. In my grandmother's time there was factory work to be had around here, making shoes and things like that, but all of it moved away to cheaper places.

It's pretty much farming, a struggle to get by, or crossing your fingers and hoping you can get a job in the service industry -- nursing, local government, other necessary services like that. Otherwise there's not much except for being a restaurant server or cashier or that sort of thing. There is no industry to speak of so most people who want a decent job move away. Personally, I work in a field where I can do my job over the internet, so I've stuck around for the moment because cost of living is very cheap.

I guess most people my age probably met their sweethearts back in high school, or at college when they went away to college, or through work. There's not a lot of recreational stuff here where you can just mingle. If you drive over to the next town there's some bars I suppose. If I can manage to avoid the trap of not having enough money to survive somewhere with a higher cost of living, then yes, I really want to move away someday. It's a depressing place to live. I don't live in a small town but my family has a vacation home in a rural area. Grew up in a town of about It was a very traditional, conservative upbringing for the most part.

My older brother and I would go target shooting with our Dad's guns until he got us our own when I was 7 and he was We'd tie tin cans to a tree branch and try to blow them off. Church was a big part of community life. I was raised Methodist, and I lived right next door to my church. The churchgoers were decades older than me there were only a few other kids besides my brother and I but we were still forced to go to Sunday School.

The church put on a lot of events and community services in my town, and did a lot of charity work. Even though I don't consider myself religious anymore I do have a lot of respect for the church as an institution, and I don't like it when Redditors become militantly atheistic. I took up a few sports, but never stuck with them. Soccer football to those in the UK archery, baseball, tennis, etc.

Also did drama in school for 2 years. I didn't have any friends growing up, so I didn't get invited to parties, but there were lots of them, and were mostly attended by the football players and cliquey girls. They featured underage drinking, bonfires, skinny dipping, sex, video games, or any combination of the five.

Even though we were raised on traditional conservative values, being a bit rebellious was part of growing up. Parents certainly didn't want kids going to these parties, but doing a few naughty things behind their back was what separated us from the dorky little grade school kids. It was seen as a part of being a young man. At age 13 I went through Confirmation at my church with a few of the other kids my age.

Nothing much to tell, but it was considered important where I lived.

• Failures and the Law: Structural Failure, Product Liability and Technical Insurance 5 (Istli Special
• The Most Important Questionnaire You Will Ever Take In Your Life
• A Patent On Murder
• My Beautiful Idol
• Die Chroniken der Jägerin 1: Gefährtin der Dämonen (German Edition)
• Knock Out (Bulldog Drummond Book 8)
• Sarabande