Yeah. I know what you mean. I grew up in rural Wisconsin. In the school I went to, when they handed out the science textbooks the teacher made us tear out the sections on geology and evolution and drop them in a trashcan he held as he walked the aisles between our desks - all to make sure those godless rocks didn't give us any false ideas about the earth being older than 6,000 years.
The one Catholic family had to live outside the town limits because there was an agreement between the two real estate agencies in town not to sell property within the village to Catholics. Although we had only 800 people, there were two of everything: grocery stores, butcher shops, hardware stores, etc. One for the Lutherans and one for the Presbyterians.
Kids played games like 'smear the queer' and 'nigger pile'. The annual football game was called (I kid you not) the Toilet Bowl and was commemorated with a parade where two high school kids were crowned the Toilet Bowl king and queen and rode a giant mock-up crapper through the streets as people threw toilet paper at them.
The folks still live there. I go back every couple of years but even with all the development of late it's still the same town it always was.
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Date: 2007-07-24 04:02 pm (UTC)The one Catholic family had to live outside the town limits because there was an agreement between the two real estate agencies in town not to sell property within the village to Catholics. Although we had only 800 people, there were two of everything: grocery stores, butcher shops, hardware stores, etc. One for the Lutherans and one for the Presbyterians.
Kids played games like 'smear the queer' and 'nigger pile'. The annual football game was called (I kid you not) the Toilet Bowl and was commemorated with a parade where two high school kids were crowned the Toilet Bowl king and queen and rode a giant mock-up crapper through the streets as people threw toilet paper at them.
The folks still live there. I go back every couple of years but even with all the development of late it's still the same town it always was.