Spartan Daily

Missing the beauty of a small town life

Brittany Patterson is the Spartan Daily managing editor. Her column "Small Town Girl" appears every other Wednesday.

I am a small town girl, born and raised. I grew up in the tiny blink-and-you’ll-miss-it town of Robbins, California — population 100.

Home of a general store, a post office, a volunteer fire department and a John Deere and Robbins Elementary school, K-8 with 70 kids and grand total of four classrooms. 

Looking back on my childhood, I loved living in a small town.

To further solidify my country bumpkin image, I should mention I grew up five miles outside of our cozy town on a 20-acre ranch across from the Sacramento River.

When you’re surrounded by cornfields, a half hour car ride from what most people consider civilization, you grow to be resourceful. You find ways to stretch your imagination.

The eucalyptus forest on our property became a magical forest filled with pixies and an evil, albeit misunderstood dragon.

The pasture, acres of waist high grass dotted with oak trees was transformed into the prairie and my sisters and I, pioneers traveling to a new land, had to navigate broken axels and mysterious sicknesses.

Sometimes I feel bad for those people who grew up in the big city because they don’t know what they were missing.

There is something nearly unexplainable about the sense of peace one feels when they wake up and hear nothing.

No cars or sirens. No laughing children on their way to schools or neighbors arguing next door.

Nearly everyday I miss the quiet.

The skyline in the country remains unsoiled by monstrous steel skyscrapers and billboards. My current view is of a sprawling neighborhood in midtown San Jose, a dirty maze of human dwellings, our belongings and windows butting rudely into one another.

Nearly everyday I miss the sight of tractors plowing fields, planting crops that would travel across the world to feed millions. I miss the space.

It’s just you, the stars and the birds.

It’s a special kind of peace that our nation, which used to be an agrarian society, would have understood perfectly.

Today it seems my childhood belongs to the minority.

Those who grew up in the big city will say I missed out on being exposed to the richness of culture that is unique to a big city.

In some respects they’re right. I didn’t see the ocean until I was 11. I didn’t eat Thai food, sushi or Indian food until just last year.

If you wanted me to come to a movie in high school, I needed an hours notice — 20 minutes to get dressed and 35 minutes to drive to the nearest theater.

I was always the last kid to get picked up in high school because it would take my mom an extra half hour to get to town.

Ran out of milk while making pancakes? Enjoy substituting water because it just wasn’t feasible to drive into town for a gallon.

On the other hand, I had the opportunity to do things many people my age will never get the opportunity to do.

If there’s a zombie apocalypse I promise you want to bunk with me. I spent 15 years of my life farming organic produce.

Want to know how to pick out a cantaloupe or when a zucchini is most tender? I can tell you and that and tell you what sex your eggplant is.

Skills like that won’t get me a journalism job, but they could save my life if the world nearly ends.

When I wasn’t weeding and knee deep in a strawberry patch the very lack of things to do allowed me to foster my love of reading. My sister, Anna, and I would spend hours delving into novels checked out from the local library (only 15 minutes away).

Granted, growing up isolated meant I never understood the collected consciousness of big city sports teams or the general busy character that big cities embody, but I was lucky enough to have parents who made to keep me involved with 4-H, marching band and dance lessons.

I grew up surrounded by the quieter, subtler character my small town possesses, and I argue that has allowed me to grow into a bigger person, unrestricted by the social constructs of a big city.

My roots are firmly panted in the heartland of this nation.

I may be a small town girl, but I have big city dreams.