I grew up in a small town, thinking it was larger. It was only about 8,000 at most, I think. It's even less now. The big change was that the main employer in town, the railroad, which employed about a thousand men (and perhaps a few women), shut down the operation and moved it somewhere else. It was devastating, of course, to the town, but the town is still there. It has evolved into a sort of extra busy crossroads because of major highways that intersect there and it's also the country seat. It isn't what it used to be. But what is?
The downtown area, all four blocks of it, is practically a ghost town. Not a single business remains from when I last lived there. But it occurred to me that, even if the railroad shops had remained in operation, the downtown business district would still look the same as it down now anyway. I say that because the old downtowns of every town big and small almost everywhere have "decayed" (can't think of a better word). The old businesses either moved outside of town, to the mall or went out of business. Now towns and cities are surrounded by big box stores and chain stores out on the strip. Nobody planned it like that; it just happened. Everyone has a car.
My hometown was on segregated in some ways. Only one business that I recall, an independent drive-in restaurant, had a sign that said "Whites Only," which my father had to explain to me. Schools were not segregated beyond where people happened to live but neighborhoods were de facto segregated. Probably about 93% or 94% white in the 1950s. There were no Asians or Latin Americans but there had long been Middle Easterners living there, curiously, and that is in West Virginia. There is a gravestone a few yards from where my parents and grandparents are buried that is inscribed in Arabic. The person buried there died before I was born, too.
Club-wise, I said that men in my neighborhood did not belong to clubs and only some were regular church goers. But chances are, men in other neighborhoods on the other side of town were more likely to be members of some club and probably more than one. They were the professional and managerial class, I guess you would say. There was a country club. The two and only times I visited the country club were for my 50th high school reunion, two nights in a row. All those clubs for men, like the Elks, probably had lady's auxiliaries. My late father-in-law was not a mason and he never asked me to join. I guess I'm not good material for something like that. But his son didn't join, either.
There were few police then, don't know about now. They were more like Barney Fife and it was likely that you knew the name of at least one. I don't think any kid ever tried going naked on the streets but there were still places with enough privacy where you could get out of your clothes with a friend if you wanted to.
I'm still not sure about the times being simpler but I was.
