Small Towns: Heaven or Hell

I'm researching for a book about "baby boomers" retiring and moving from the big city to a small town, where they think life will be simpler, people more honest and decent, and life just a lot better quality. The idea is expressed in a thousand sappy country and western songs, like the "Luckenbach Texas song" that Waylon and Willie did, and Merle Haggard, "Big City Turn Me Loose and Set Me Free," and the cheap knockoffs on what passes for country music today. There is currently an idiotic song by some loser bragging about how life is better in his little hick town where he and his wife can go drink beer on the tailgate of his pickup truck parked on a dirt road, and how that beats the hell out of anything you can do in the city.

I'd like to hear stories from people who have moved from cities to small towns - what did you expect, how did you decide, and how has it worked out. I'll share some of my own stories - how I was dumb enough to move from Austin to Amarillo after I got out of law school and drag my long suffering wife with me - talk about moving from heaven to hell! More recently I moved from Houston after 23 years to Kerrville, a town with 20,000 people in the Texas Hill Country, that regularly turns up on the best small towns to retire in lists in Money and the Wall St. Journal. That move was more successful than the Amarillo self imposed sentence, but it has had its own share of problems.

My goal is to entertain, and inform so that maybe someone will learn from my experience and be spared some of the trouble and disillusionment I've experienced and inflicted on my family.