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For anyone who has never lived in a small town, there’s kind of a mystique around the entire experience, don’t you think? It seems quirky and fun, the idea that everyone knows everyone else and all of their business besides.
I think that, for people who have that firsthand experience, it’s probably a bit less charming most days, but you know what?
They still have good stories – and these 17 townies are dishing on the latest in local hot gossip.
17. Gotta love Next Door.
I don’t live in a small town but my small bit of the city were amused today. A woman posted in the local neighborhood Facebook group to say a woman had knocked on her door at 6.25am. The reason was she had tracked her missing husbands phone to the address.
He had not come back the night before. The man was not there and the poster was a bit concerned. This led to much chat about burglaries and whether she should post the ring doorbell footage.
A man then joined the thread to apologise. It was the missing man. He had got drunk at the football and ended up falling asleep in the house next door to the woman who posted on Facebook. Much hilarity.
16. I think I’d stay out of the water.
Thousands of crabs washed ashore dead but nobody really knows why, I think they blamed wind turbines at one point.
Dogs are now getting really sick and there’s warnings for people to stay away from the beach but nobody knows why it’s happening.
15. Of course they were.
Town of about 1800. The girl’s volleyball coach got a Dwi. The school’s principal went to pick her up from jail, and was arrested for dwi himself.
Somehow it got out that these two (both married) were having an affair.
14. She probably never will be.
A woman known as a pretty awful person disappeared.
“Everyone” knows it was probably her husband, but the family own’s over 10,000 acres and no body has been found.
The rest of her family is ramping up an awareness campaign so should be interesting to see where this all goes.
13. Not the cats!
Not current but it needs to be documented in history – the serial Catnapper.
A couple lost their cat so they went knocking door to door in our town, and came across their cat crying in a random home’s front window. They call the police who arrive and find 50+ missing cats, along with a fucking graveyard of cats in the garden. Some that had been missing for up to 7 years. It culminated in the catnapper, a 50+ year old woman, stuffing as many cats as she could in a car and going on a police chase through our little town.
Most of the cats were identified and taken home, a very small few went to rescue centres, and the catnapper is currently going under mental health treatment. Apparently she just took home any cat she saw while on a walk for the last 7 years.
This happened about a couple years back but I had to tell the tale.
12. The talk of the town.
While fleeing another hit and run, and possible DUI, some dude tried to go full speed directly thru the middle of our town square. The problem with that is we have a big historic fountain there. Traffic is usually supposed to swerve arround the fountain, he did not.
This dude in a white suv ramps into our fountain, and smashes into the center pillar. Thankfully the fountain was off for the winter, so there was less damage, but they still have no clue how, and how much money its gonna take to fix this mess.
The car was removed, but the fountain is still wrapped up in its tarp a month later. Theres security cam footage of the ramp and its all anyone could talk about for a few weeks.
11. Well now I need to know.
If the local horse dentist is actually a licenced horse dentist
10. Petty AF.
A guy wanted to bury his parents on their (parents’) slightly rural, totally out of the way, virtually-no-neighbors property, but the village said no way. We don’t do that here. We’re classy.
So he went to the state for permission to build a funeral home/crematorium instead, and he built a giant mausoleum with both their caskets right on the corner of the property where everyone and their grandma can see it when they drive by!
And he has zero plans to actually turn this into a functioning business. It’s about half done, no landscaping, and construction vehicles parked all over the place. Gotta hand it to him!
9. I’d be willing to do a taste test.
Two places make dill dip. One accused the other of stealing the recipe.
8. Only two weeks? Over pastries?
a couple promissed a lot of cakes and fancy breads to the local festival, and didn’t deliverd
everyone is mad at them for the last 2 weeks
It’s just enough for people to collectively be peeved at the couple for the broken promise, but not a big enough deal for it to really warrant any action. It’s the perfect situation of ‘everyone knows about it’ and also everyone probably shrugs it off within a few minutes of knowing
7. I would be mad, too!
People here in my town of 396 still upset that the local Christmas tree was taken down and thrown away with all the lights still on it.
6. A chicken scandal.
This was the infamous chicken scandal that plagued my town of 4K for 3 years.
The problem started when the town’s libertarian decided to have chickens for his own eggs.
The problem was he lived within the city proper which had a rule against farm animals within the city (this is a rural farming area I live in).
One of the city council members (he shall be known as A-hole) discovered he had chickens a few weeks after he got them and the city sent him a letter telling him he had to get rid of them.
Well, he was not going to go down without a fight. So he spent some time looking into things and discovered the A-hole who reported him lived within the city and he also had chickens.
Well, this of course caused a bit of a scandal. The city ended up claiming there was a grandfather clause for anyone who had livestock within the city prior to the rule change 17 years ago. The problem with that was that clause applied to the A-hole’s father, not the A-hole who lived at the same address.
Needless to say, the war was on!
A couple of weeks go by and the town cops are messing with Libguy over petty shit. Libguy somehow gets a recording of A-hole calling the police and lying to them about what Libguy was doing. Police now want to charge Libguy for some absurd ridiculous recording law that really doesn’t apply since it was someone with the police dept who gave him the tape not that he stole it.
This gets blown up to the point where the bigger cities news crews are now showing up to city council meetings that are being called to address this issue. These meetings are getting absurdly blown out of proportion and in all honesty somewhat slimy and jicky in how the city is handling it. Libguy subpoenas the city council emails to show there was a concerted effort to f**k with him and cover for A-hole.
Well in the course of getting the Emails it was discovered that there was a sexting issue going on between three of the city council members. LMAO, believe me when I say this did not involve people that would be considered sexy. all three (2 women and 1 male) were married, 200lbs plus, and in their 50’s. I mean Emails about double-dildos, pegging, swinging…etc..It was hilarious.
In the end, the Libguy got the last laugh. he lost his chickens but found a loophole where he could actually own Llamas in the city since they were not considered livestock. So he put up a fence all around his yard (ugly chicken wire fence) just tall enough so the Llamas could not get out by jumping. People actually would go by walking their dogs and pet the Llamas.
The problem though was that Llamas s*%t like cows and it stinks in such a small enclosure. This went on for about a year until he sold his house and moved (it stunk for at least a block around his property and he lived right behind the town’s grocery store). Two of the council members involved got divorced over the sexting issue and the third one sold her bar because of it.
This was the infamous chicken scandal that plagued my town of 4K for 3 years.
5. Corruption in action.
Local government is eye-wateringly corrupt most places.
My granddad and uncle worked for years and years as a father-son homebuilding operation. Just a couple of honest, hardworking builders.
Well in the 80s, townhomes started to be really big and consequently my grandfather bought some property with the aim of building some, but he needed to go before the city council to get the zoning changed.
They told him to go kick rocks, of course. Well, there was a real estate fat-cat on the council who voted no along with the others. So what did this guy do after shooting it down? He immediately bought up that land, had the zoning changed, and built rows of townhouses.
4. All over an octopus.
The last thing that was super polarizing in my town was a painting on the front of a toy store called inland octopus. in our downtown. It was an octopus playing with a bunch of toys.
Well our town is very very strict about our old school downtown. They ordered them to paint over it with brick orange paint. The store owner said hell no and it went to court for weeks.
All the while the city was charging a huge fine every single day the painting stayed. A couple of the local millionaires kept paying the fine. They didn’t care about the painting.
They just liked the drama and like to stick it to the city. eventually the toy store lost and now its just a huge ugly brick orange wall in the middle of downtown.
Us locals still talk about now and then. But at the time it was an uproar.
3. Like a horror movie.
Swans in the local rivers/lakes have been dying from avian flu and we’ve all been warned to keep our dogs away from sick or dead swans in case infection spreads to humans.
2. A missing person.
Car was spotted in a field burnt to a crisp on New Years Day. Found around noon since nobody was out and around. Farmer finally drove by and called the land owner to see if he knew about it, which he did not. Hearing that he approached the vehicle until he was about 20ft away and noticed a burnt body next to it. He then called 911.
Nothing was known about who it was till a missing person was reported later that day, car and body were so burnt no identifying could be done immediately. Two cameras caught the whole thing from local farm grain bins. Video showed the car in the field and then light moving as if it was stuck and trying to get out.
Assumptions are the catalytic converter started the fire but no one knows for sure. All happened at around 2 am. Not much controversy but definitely the talk of the town. Funeral for the man was a week and a half ago.
1. Oh I bet she does.
Small town with 3000 inhabitants. Everyone knows each other, everyone knows where everyone works, who is related to whom, and so on.
Still, my cousin doesn’t know who is the father of her child.
I’m not proud of it, but I’m extremely here for all of these stories.
If you live in a small town yourself, give us the goods on where you live in the comments!
