Personal Narrative: Living In A Small Town In Kansas

Growing up I lived in the small town of Duncan, Oklahoma; although, not nearly as small as the town I currently reside in. Throughout my adolescence, I attended Mark Twain Elementary School and as I was ending the third grade, my parents decided that we should move to Fox, Oklahoma to be closer to my grandparents. Moving would bring big changes my way such as a smaller school, living in the middle of nowhere, and new ways of entertainment. Living in the country has its pros and cons, but I can tell you the only thing I could think of the night we moved out there was the cons. Eventually, I had grown accustomed to the silence, lack of traffic, and having nothing to do. Looking back I feel that if we had not moved to the country then I would

Oh, it has been a month. So much has happened. A couple hundred miles into our trip, we looked ahead and say a long line of people. It was the kansas river. When we got up close we could see what the people were doing. One by one the wagons would cross the river. We were thinking about just walking across, the water was only like 2.5 feet deep. We decided it wasn't worth the risk and waited in line. When it was our turn we gave them $1 and started moving across. The river was only about 200 yards across. When we got across we looked back and saw that some people tried crossing without using the fairy. They were stuck. While we waited for the rest of our train we watched them trying to get unstuck. They managed to get out but there wagon and

My mind will often wander to all the places I've lived in and all those I would love to travel to, or visit again. I think of the streets of Santa Fe, how fresh it would be compared to the over 100 degree temperature of were I am now, the hot dry heat of El Paso, Texas, a place I often come back to, the soil were my roots are permanently ingrained. El Paso has grown significantly in the past 10 years alone and is now the sixth most populous city in Texas (World Population Reviw). It's far from it's days when it was widely known as “El Chuco,” or “ChucoTown,” nicknames whose origins and meaning have long been debated, but no matter how much of the new generation is unfamiliar with these terms the history lives on through the streets and current

Everyday gets harder and harder to survive. The storms are getting worse. They make my husband's farm all dry. It’s very hard to find food when we can’t grow our food either. The stock market just crashed a few years ago and everything is just getting worse. Everyone in our little town in Kansas is struggling it's not just our family. Last week the dust got so bad outside we were trapped inside our house for almost two days. The wind would be so strong and the heat would also be so bad it would burn our skin if we went outside. I know the whole town is struggling even though I haven’t been outside for a few weeks. We lost all our chickens from the wind. I wonder if anyone else has lost any of their animals too? If my family was strong enough

4,097 people. That was the population of Centralia Missouri in 2011. Moving had never been an issue for me, when your dad is in the military you get used to it. This time it was different than any other time. My parents were divorcing and my mom was forcing me to move to a town with only 4,097 people opposed to my home in Virginia with 225,401 people.

I'm from Round Rock, or for those of you who don't know where that is, we'll just go with Austin. Round Rock is great and you can find activities to find on some occasion, but when I am in Austin I am never bored. I used to go downtown a lot when I was younger with my Mother, Father, and older sister, but as my parents became busy and my sister and I became more involved in school we make the 20-minute travel to Austin less and less. I grew up with my two sisters and mother in the safety and growing town of Round Rock, but when I was able to drive my friends and I would make the drive downtown to enjoy the ambiance of Austin. I was given more freedom than my older sister was given in high school, but I couldn't complain my mother trusted me

A toast to a place above all the rest, this place though odd has captured my heart. I know this isn’t a conventional Burns supper toast, or even a real toast at all. But as I was thinking about which toast I wanted to give; I realized that there was only one place that I wanted to talk about. So firstly, I would like to ask you guys have you ever been to a place that makes you feel happy. A place that even at the mention of its name, you can’t help but think of happy memories you had there. The place that does that for me is the Black Hills of South Dakota. I spent my summer working at a campground in the heart of the Black Hills. So here’s a toast to the Black Hills and all of its natural beauty.

Since I moved to Waukesha when I was just five years old, I have learned to appreciate and get involved in several ways around this city. Recently, however, I got accepted to my dream school; UW-Madison. I was ecstatic to finally have the opportunity to leave the town I had spent almost all of my life in and start a new chapter somewhere else.

I am a South Dakota girl through and through. I grew up in Clark and haven’t been far away from there since graduating in 1993. I attended SDSU where I started as a music major and quickly learned that I was not meant for that classroom. My high school English teacher gave me some excellent advice during Christmas break of my freshmen year, and I never looked back! In my 16 years as an educator, I have taught a wide range of ELA, Speech, Journalism, and History classes to 7-12 grade students in a number of A and B schools in the Watertown area. I have landed back home at CHS where I have taught 9-12 ELA/Speech and K-4 PE for the last four years.

Kansas City born and raised in rural Indiana, I did not live and grow up in the same house as most kids around here do. I’ve moved twice in my lifetime and couldn’t be more grateful that we did. My family has made southern Indiana our home now for the last 15 years. I’ve played multiple sports here and with each sport I made more and more friends. When I go back to the city I was born in, I think about how different my life would’ve been if my parents hadn’t decided to move. I would have never gotten the chance to wake up and be surrounded by corn fields every day. I would never have been able to ride fourwheelers in my backyard, mow grass on a riding-mower, or even have a garden. There is privacy here, whereas neighbors in the city can see

One of the hardest things about moving to Little Rock for college is knowing that I will not get to enjoy southern home cooked meals everyday. My grandma’s crispy pork chops with fried potatoes, and creamy macaroni and cheese and freshly picked green beans, from the garden in the backyard, or her homemade vegetable soup and buttered cornbread really screams my name as I stand in line for a standard cafeteria meal. Not having her cooking available to me everyday is definitely a struggle. Food is the center of my whole family. Food is what brings us together. Not just ordinary food though, no. It is southern home cooked food.

In 2011 on a very cold December night, my dad told me something that I will never forget. My siblings and I were all sitting in my fathers very out dated apartment, eating hamburger helper and watching a movie on his small 32 inch t.v.

Today marks 3 years of living in Cheyenne, 3 amazing years filled with incredible memories, many tears and unforgettable friendships. Usually around this time I would normally move to another state or even a different country, however this time it’s different I’m able to stay in the same vicinity. I have always been that person that use to dread socializing. When I moved to Cheyenne I was determined to not make the same mistake I have seem to make before in the past with a new location and new school. I physically put myself out there and forced myself to socialize, which was painfully hard at first, but totally worth it. I ended up participating in the Central Womens’ Soccer Program for the whole 3 years of my time at Central, and in that

Agony ripped through my insides like a disease. My great grandmother died in the winter of 2014. She lived in Kansas at the time but my great grandfather died and found his final resting place in South Dakota. Since South Dakota lies so far north, during the winter a permafrost covers the ground making a burial impossible. So, to bury my great grandmother with my great grandfather, my family cremated her to bury the couple together.

Eighteen years ago Julie Carol Parton (my loving mother) and Ric Parton (my inspirational father) brought Logan Parton (that's me) into this unique and vastly changing world. Little did I know that one day I was going to set immensely challenging goals to achieve. I grew up in a small town, near the corner of Indiana, known as Vevay. For the early portions of my life I lived on a middle sized farm with my family. There always was two different perspectives within our household. On one side of the house there was my father and my oldest sister Christina, and on the other side was my mother and my middle sister Melisa. The perspective that my father and oldest sister shared was that they both felt the want to make money and move away from Vevay, on the other side my mother and middle sister had the mindset of wanting to be farmers and