“Most of us, we want to work hard, love our families, feel free, and safe”
While visiting Montezuma I met a mother watching her children play in the public library. She shared with me her experience of growing up and living in a rural town.
“I grew up in this town, but then I moved away after I graduated high school and then I came back almost 10 years ago. I was already married and had kids and all those things. I guess after being away and being in a bigger town, I just liked the small town family feel of a small community. Everybody knows each other.”
“I wanted to raise my family in a place where you can leave your car unlocked and you're not worried.”
“And we wanted the kids to be in a smaller school where they could get the chance to swim in a lot of different activities like sports, band, and agricultural education, even though my kids aren't growing up on a farm. There's just lots of different opportunities because we're small. And I feel like that makes it so that kids aren’t stereotyped into certain activities. Like they’re not just band kids or sports kids. They all get to participate in all of it.”
“But I think we lack resources, as far as funding, because our numbers are low, so it's unfortunate. Just this past year our school had some funding or financial cuts because of that. One of my kid’s teachers was let go, not because she didn't do well, but because there wasn't funding for it, I hate that.”
“She was a great teacher. My kids cried. So many people did. She did too. And I know our administration didn't want to do it. Looking at the numbers, I know their hands were tied and they didn't have a choice. Unfortunately, we’re kind of in the nomad zone. We don't pull a lot of people from other towns, so unless people move specifically into our community, we don't have an opportunity for enrollment to go up. So we gradually decline.”
“I hope we can figure out a way to fund our schools better or in a different way so that it's not solely dependent on our enrollment, that we could figure out ways to help education and all those things.”
Tristan (interviewer): “What annoys you about politics these days?”
Anonymous mom: “The first thing that comes to mind is division. It seems like nothing gets accomplished because of that. Instead of figuring out how to make a change for the better, people just fight. And so for me personally, I think I choose to disengage altogether because I don't want to pick a side. I just want to live my life. I think when you asked what's my opinion about rural communities, most of us, we want to work hard, love our families, feel free, and safe. That's what we want. We'll pay our dues, but we want to be left alone. We don't want people to push their agendas on us.”
“I just want to live in a place where I'm free to make my own choices and work, contribute to our communities and we all help. Yeah. I think that's a value that I treasure about a small community too. We all rally around each other. When one person's hurting, we rally and you don't find that everywhere. We celebrate things together. We mourn together. That's what we do in small places because we're all really a big family.”