Column: Challenging small town stereotypes

By Hannah Spaar

Published April 30, 2010

When I'm talking to people, one of my first inclinations is to ask where they're from.

When the situation is flipped, it's not very easy to answer. Although most people reply the name of a large city even if they're from a suburb, I'm from neither. I don't consider myself from Kansas City at all, because I'm from a town just far enough away to be autonomously rural.

My answer is an automatic response: "I'm from Odessa, a small town on the west side of the state." It effectively kills two birds with one stone.

If I leave the second part out, I get questions about location or assumptions that I mean Odessa, Texas. Whenever people see "Bank of Odessa" on my debit card or "Odessa Bulldogs" on my most comfortable sweatshirt I get the Odessa, Texas, assumption as well, mostly due to Friday Night Lights (though that mascot is not a bulldog). I'm always reluctant to correct them — though I do every time — because when I do I reveal one of my most made-fun-of traits: I pronounce the name of our state "Massourah."

I'm not ashamed of how I pronounce it, but the constant teasing gets a little old sometimes. I'm honestly incapable of saying "Missouri" the way people from Kansas City, St. Louis and out-of-staters say it. When I try, it comes out as either "Massouree" or "Misery," so I usually just try to avoid it. Odessa is on I-70, and as such, there are a lot of people who pronounce Missouri the non-rural way, so being made fun of for it is nothing new.

It's really hard to explain my town to people who haven't encountered it, because it's not completely rural but far from urban or even suburban. We're the largest city in Lafayette County, much larger than the smaller communities along the Missouri River. Every single aspect of Odessa is a contradiction, which comes with knowing it's a small town but also a relatively large one.

I've spent most of the year defending my town to people on my floor, because those who know where it is only know it is a town of less than 5,000 people as of the last census. (The new census should have a much higher number.) For that reason, I've endured several jokes this year about my town only having two streets — which it doesn't — or just a standby "you're from Odessa," as though it makes me the most alien person imaginable.

I'm definitely not pretending my town's not rural. It is, though I'm a bit separate from it. Although most people in our school district are from outside the city limits, I've lived inside the city limits my entire life. My family owns the local newspaper, so I've grown up with that. I did Girl Scouts instead of 4-H when I was little, and FFA was one of maybe three clubs in high school I wasn't a part of. I've never been hunting.

Several of my friends, on the other hand, are your typical horse-owning, cow-milking, cowboy-boot-wearing country kids. I recently shocked a friend here by telling her a large number of both boys and girls wear camouflage to school on a daily basis.

Before I had to develop a plan for how to explain where I'm from, I never thought about the different levels of small towns and where my hometown fits in. Before then, it was merely home.