Zita Cobb

I grew up in Fargo, North Dakota – which when we moved to Chicago was always referred to as a small town, even though it was the largest in the state. I’m floored now everytime I go back how much bigger it is – I can’t believe there are actual traffic jams now. But on the flip side, real small towns in ND are getting smaller. There is less to keep people and the role of agriculture and the family farm has changed dramatically. There was recently a town even for sale, it’s happened a few times – if I’d had had that kind of capital, I would have bought it in a heartbeat: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18447178/ns/us_news-life/t/-year-old-sells-nd-town-its-memories/

Absolutely amazing story! This is the kind of story that will make a great motion picture, especially now that Hollywood seems to be running out of original material!

I grew up in Ithaca, NY. A teeny-tiny town stuck in the 60’s in the middle of upstate NY wine country. Beautiful doesn’t begin to describe it. My dad was a professor of engineering at Cornell, and his sabbatical leaves took us all over the world. I loved every minute of my time there, especially now that I’m spending some time in Provo. I’m going back this summer with my soon-to-be fiancee for my best friend’s wedding. We are spending some time in Manhattan (YAY!!) before heading upstate, and I am literally counting down the days until I can drive the potholed streets lined with 200 year old maple trees. Thanks for sharing Zina’s amazing story. Totally uplifting.

My hometown is Fredonia, Arizona and we went to St. George to do our back-to-school shopping!

The small town of my childhood was Gering, Nebraska. It’s in the very western part of the state and smack in the middle of some beautiful farming country. I didn’t spend my entire childhood there, but the golden years were definitely in Nebraska. I’ve actually been wanting to do a some posts about this place…while I’d never want to raise my children there I love it so much. I honestly felt like I grew up in the 1950’s…like, I was literally confused about this point for a while. I walked by myself to school in kidnergarten, we could ride our bikes all over town and even to the swimming pool and local gas stations (for our candy runs, natch), I gardened with my grandpa and everyone in town has a clothes line and uses it. I roamed free and felt completely safe. I loved it. Like a lot of small towns it’s dwindling…the mom and pop shops can’t sustain themselves next to Walmart and Target. Would I return and help resurrect it if I was uber-rich and had the power to do so? I doubt I could convince my husband, but the romantic in me says yes…or a strong maybe.

When I was growing up my hometown did not have a 4-way stop and my street wasn’t paved until I was 8, it was a Teeny Tiny Town. However, it isn’t anymore, it doesn’t at all resemble the little town I where I grew up, there aren’t any more orchards, the mountains are covered in enormous houses right up to the National Forest line, and the streets are full of brand new, gi-huge-ic SUV’s instead of old, beaten up trucks. I won’t ever go back, it’s just not the same.

xox

I grew up in Wray, Colorado, population 2,000, we have two stop lights. It is not just small, but isolated too! The nearest McDonald’s is 60 miles away, the nearest mall is a three hour drive. It is an agricultural area with little towns scattered about 30 miles apart. That’s a lot of open country…

I loved it, it was like growing up in the 50s, kids playing in the street until sunset, dogs didn’t have to be on leashes, riding bikes all over town, eight was old enough to look out for yourself.

Now I live in Los Angeles, and I love it here too. People from the country know a lot more about the city than people from the city know about the country.

Zita’s story is very inspiring. I would love to establish a scholarship in my old high school, (I included it in my life list) but maybe I am thinking too small!?

I love that you ran this piece. I moved to Fogo Island when I was an infant — my first memories are there. My parents went there to teach in 1970, and our house had one of the few indoor toilets! My Dad was a founding member of the Flat Earth Society, and that is how Lion’s Den, Fogo, became one of the “official” four corners of the earth. :-)

We moved when I was two years old, and I’ve only returned once as an adult. I’d love to take my children and husband there, perhaps to spend some time writing in one of Zita’s studios!

What a lovely story!

The island looks stunning — definitely worth visiting!

Cheers,
Kristina

I grew up in Massena, NY. Not necessarily a one-stop-light town, but small and growing smaller every year. Now that the Eisenhower Locks & Dam aren’t used as much for shipping, and now that GM has closed its plant there, most of my old friends wind up making a living at WalMart. I live in Portland OR, and I’m sad to say, I’ll never go back.

I have to say that I was SO happy to see this woman’s name. My mother’s name is also Zita and I have *never* met anyone with the same name! How fun!

My small town is Woodhull, IL (pop. 789). As a young woman I couldn’t wait to get out and now live in the Washington, DC suburbs.

However. I think about going back every. single. day. Although I realize I’ve probably romanticized it to a ridiculous extent there is much to be said for living close to one’s family and in general enjoying a simpler — not to mention cheaper and traffic-jam free — existence. My grandfather, father, and uncle are farmers; my dad is almost 70 and probably will retire soon. Not sure what will happen to the farm because I can barely grow out my hair let alone an actual crop of something; no one else in the family has the interest or skills, really, to take over.

My husband is a certified City Boy and looks at me like I’m nuts when I say “Let’s go back to IL. It’s not to late for me to learn how to do stuff.” Maybe I am nuts, but 90% of me is finished with this urban experiment and is ready to pull on the overalls and to do some real work.

If I were rich would I return and resurrect? Absolutely.

Signed,

Tearing Up Just Thinking About It

i was born in the Czech Republic, grew up as a suburb city girl in Tucson, Az, but fell in love with the czech countryside(and my husband) spending almost every summer at my grandparents’ cottage and moved to a neighboring village when i finished college! eventhough life is a little harder in the countryside than in the city, i would never go back!

Fascinating! Thanks for sharing.

I grew up in Edmonton, Alberta (Canadian prairie city) that has a population of about 600,000. Well, outside of Edmonton in a town called Sherwood Park that was more like a suburb. So not as small as some of the readers’ home towns but small for me. You see, for some crazy reason, even at 11 years of age I KNEW that I would leave for a bigger city.

I’ve lived in Vancouver, Cape Town, Toronto and now Vancouver again. This is about as small as I would go. I just love theatre and galleries and museums sooo much that I need my regular fix – hence twice yearly visits to NYC.

So although I love the rural cottage life in the summer on the weekends, would I move back? Not likely. But then I never experienced that idyllic small town feel either.

I grew up in a town of 900 people in the middle of UT. We had to go to the next town to go to school, buy groceries, or get stopped at a stop sign (even the next town doesn’t have a stop light!)

I’ve now lived in some of the world’s biggest cities (Rio de Janeiro, New Delhi, and Istanbul.) But I still love going back home. There is something about growing up in a place that small that makes you more self sufficient and at the same time teaches to serve others and to accept their help in return.

I’m mostly grateful I’ve experience life at both extremes (and in the middle) it’s brought my life a great balance. And maybe someday I’ll be lucky enough to move back a small town – I started planning for that future when I bought a house in St. George last year!

I grew up in a small town that isn’t small anymore. Four generations of my family were born and raised there and I’m the only member of my immediate family to move away. It has a huge pull for me but I keep telling myself I know better. ;)

I’m from a tiny Nova Scotia fishing town in Zita’s neck of the woods – if I had a fortune I might go back and invest but I can’t go back to live there. I need indoor pools, gyms, school options, more sports options for my kids, bigger ward family, more shopping, more everything!!! Plus I don’t ever want to live through another NS winter – 18 was enough.

My husband grew up in Newfoundland and this is just the kind of thing a Newfoundlander would do. They absolutely love the place ( it is really beautiful) and they are so proud of their homeland.

I grew up in Weiser, Idaho; a farming community. I love the people. I love that land. I love Indian Head and the hills we used to roam when we could get time off from farming. I think some people just belong to the little part of the earth that helped to make them– think about it. That actual earth, air, water were all involved in your making. No wonder sometimes we are called home by something stronger and crazier than we can put a name to.
My husband works in the computer business and we live in the Seattle area now. I like it here, but if we had fulfillment of our fantasy of independent wealth, we would be adding 7 to the 4700 population in that little ol’ berg in Idaho.

I recently moved from just south of Ogden, UT to Gallup, NM –right on Route 66. It’s the worst thing I ever could have done. :) I’ve discovered in this move that I am NOT a small town girl. Maybe if there was something good about this town, but there are no small quaint shops, no nice big mall, no Target (gasp!) and the busiest Walmart in the country…it’s just not for me. I need a big city. If I had money I would donate money to small towns just so they could get their own Target. Every woman deserves to have one within driving distance.

I read about Zita Cobb in the New York Times magazine and cut out the article because it was about Fogo Island. When we went to Newfoundland a few years ago we visited Fogo Island and loved it. We visited because there is a famous Newfoundland song that we all know called “I’s the B’y” and one of the lines in the chorus is “Fogo, Twillingate, Morton’s Harbour, all around the circle”. All of those are real places along the coast of northern Newfoundland so we visited all three and went “all around the circle”. It was before Zita’s time, but Fogo Island had such a remote untouched feel to it. I have a thing for islands anyway and Fogo was just lovely. I am looking forward to going back on our next visit.

I spent a good part of my adolescent years in St. George, too (Go Panthers!). I always thought I would go back, but the older I get, the less it seems like that’s going to happen.
That said, I go back a couple times a year at least to visit the people and the town. I still love it, I just don’t think I want to live there. But I’m in that phase of my life where living anywhere I’ve lived before feels that way. Maybe that will change as babies come along!

I loved Zita’s story! What an incredible gift to her hometown. I’m not sure I would know how to be so generous. I live in a small town outside of St. George that has struggled with identity through the 33 years I’ve lived here. I don’t want to see it become another Big Box community like St. George and then sit empty with a changing economy. I don’t want to see it dry up either. I want my children to consider being here as my grandchildren come into the world, and I want them to have work and enjoy the clean air and the small town-ness. I admire Zita’s vision and resolution.

IS anyone like me where they couldn’t wait/can’t wait to leave their town or city? I am still here, teaching 20 years and giving back by giving my all in a crime-ridden, racially tensioned Newburgh, NY. I weary of it many days and have been really noticing the saddness around me. Buildings, people and even animals look tired (sorry to steal that analogy from Lauryn Hill). And it’s not getting better. More and more students end up in trouble or sadly dead and I wonder what I can do? I am scared sometimes to walk around the city neighborhood I live in. A few miles away my parents reside (for over 50 years) in a rural setting near a farm and lake. We spend ample time with them and love it:) Their street used to be a dirt road when we were children and the main highway had no lights for miles when they married and moved here to run a business. (That’s a whole other great story:) I dream of moving, maybe not too far, but of having roaming land and peace in my own little neck of the woods.

Beautiful! Another inspiring story. I think Fargo Island is a nice place. Hopefully all their projects become successful.

I grew in Roosevelt, Utah, and it still has a population of around 5,000. I couldn’t wait to leave, but the older I get and the more I return, especially with my kids, the more dear it is to me. If I struck gold, I could see myself going back to make it a better place. Not permanently, but always having some kind of vacation home there.

P.S. What’s that white building in the second picture?

I grew up in South Australia in a country town with a population of about 1,000 people. As a child it didn’t seem all that small to me but that could have something to do with the fact that the previous town we lived in only had about 30 residents! Driving to the nearest big town an hour away to do grocery shopping was the norm and McDonalds was a treat we got about twice a year when we went to the city for Christmas shopping or various appointments.
When I was young I loved living in a small town and couldn’t comprehend living in the city. As a teenager however, I began to realise that such a small town held no opportunities for me. I was lucky that my parents moved our family to the city when I was 16. Small towns in Australia have been declining for a long time. Unless there is tourism nearby, ie. a wine region or a popular beach, small towns in Australia really don’t hold much for young people.
I like the idea of raising my kids somewhere where they can ride their bikes freely, know all their neighbours and walk to school like I did, however I also want them to have the opportunities that I didn’t have: attend a decent school, have good medical care nearby if required, take dance or music lessons, visit museums, have friends from different cultures… Until I was 16 everyone I knew was either white or Aboriginal!
I can’t see myself ever going back. In fact, right now I’m living in the San Francisco Bay Area with my husband and two young girls. Quite a change from my home town! My husband is also from a country town in South Australia (although substantially bigger) and he has never thought of going back either.
I applaud Zita for her good work in giving back to her community. If I was in her situation I’d like to think that I would give something back as well. However, I would feel most inclined to give back to the city that I spent my later teenage and most of my adult years in, as it too, unfortunately, is in decline.

I grew up in a sprawling metropolis of a city but my mom grew up in a small city/university town. She lived on the only 2 lane street and there were no stop lights when she was a girl (now there are maybe 2). The city was by the sea and her grandma lived by the shore so she spent a lot of time outdoors and in the ocean.
When I was little we used to spend weeks of the summer there doing the things she did as a kid (playing in the sand, catching fish, making our own fish poles, gardening etc.) There was no McDonald’s and only one small department store. My mom can be quite protective but I clearly remember her allowing me to walk the streets at night with my brothers, something I didn’t think she’d let me do if we were back home.

I’m just so happy to read about a Canadian gal! Love it. But I do feel the anguish between a community needing change and cash and a community deeply torn about how to achieve this.

The world really is such a small place – I live in St.John’s, Newfoundland, and read the blog you write in France every day!
I work with a not for profit organization that promotes the work of over 300 professional and emerging craftspeople in this province – and there are hundreds more creating beautiful works in their living rooms that we will never even meet.
I was so excited to read this post acknowledging Zita’s great commitment to the creative community of our province. The people of Newfoundland and Labrador are generous beyond belief and fiercely proud of their island. This is another great example of that spirit!

O’Leary, Prince Edward Island is my village. I had a wonderful upbringing by the village but I do not think it is prospering now. I am comfortable but not wealthy by Zita Cobb’s standards. I would definately go back to O’Leary and try to improve standards there if I had the money. Yea! Zita! I have just heard about her from the Toronto Star. Now I would like to go to Newfoundland and live in her artist community for a while. The stuff dreams are made of. Oddly enough, I have been to every province except Newfoundland but haven’t made it to Nunavuit or any of the territories.