I grew up in a small town of perhaps 9,000, then moved to the country when I was in high school. The small town is even smaller now because the main industry closed up shop (railroad shops for the Virginian, then the N&W railroad) and moved to another town (Roanoke). In the country I was considered to be from the city and to be frank, the small town was much more city-like than living in the suburbs. And people had all the big city complaints about the traffic and parking. If nothing else, those complaints have evaporated. Many of the local business moved to the mall outside of town and there's still no Wal-Mart, or wasn't the last time I was there. Other small towns are even worse off but there doesn't seem to be much difference in the way of crime. But some things have changed.
One is, I think people are less tolerant now. That is particularly ironic because one thinks of the 1950s as being very conformist. A rebel was someone who had a D.A. haircut and wore his shirt-tail out. If he was really bad, he had a motorbike, and we had our share of those. Yet it was also a time when people would come to your door asking for handouts, showing you dog eared cards that said they couldn't speak. It was a time when small towns had characters who shuffled around collecting empty soda bottles (we said "pop" bottles), dressed strangely and were incredibly dirty. And there were old timers who were obviously poor and would talk about delivering mail on horseback. In fact, I guess you could say we lived in a working section of town. There was a sporting goods store that seemed to have more boats than anything. These days they have way more guns than they did then. I don't recall them ever displaying handguns when I lived there.
There was a police department, which occupied half of the building shared with the fire department. On warm summer days they opened the garage door and you could see their gun cabinet. The policemen were about like Barney Fife and had swivel holsters. I suspect the policemen are a little different these days with Prussian haircuts and an attitude. But perhaps I'm being unfair.
It wasn't much different in the country, except everyone seemed to own guns, mostly long guns. No one I knew had a revolver and only one person had a .22 automatic. I got to fire it and I don't even know what kind it was. Hunting was popular but because they would shoot anything that moved, if it would hold still long enough, there was no hunting locally. A few people owned rather ancient guns, though I never saw a muzzleloader in the country, though I saw lots and lots in the "city," oddly enough. The place I moved had been in my stepmother's (my mother having died) family for over a hundred years and it was a log house (not a cabin, a house). They had a Winchester single-shot in, I think, .32-40, or some such old cartridge. It weighted what seemed like 15 pounds but I never saw anyone shoot it.
I always wondered whatever happened to that old rifle.