I live in a rural, southern, farming community where people do socialize outside their social class. Kids growing up together, attending the same small school and remaining in the community (or coming back to the community after college) and church membership contribute to a situation where guests at parties do have very diverse social class and economic backgrounds.
This weekend I gave a baby shower for the daughter-in-law of a friend at the far end of my rural road. My friend married an older farmer at 17. I believe they both graduated from high school, but don’t know that for a fact. Her husband’s father died young and he had many responsibilities early on. They are very small landowners and their main crop is one that isn’t doing so well the last few years. They make ends meet in a variety of ways. They have a vegetable garden, chickens, fill their freezer during hunting season with venison. She has a home business.
For the most part, the women of my generation in this community who went to college are elementary school teachers or nurses. I would guess about half of the women of my generation at the party went to college. They were the daughters of the large landowners. Most of the men are farmers or contractors. These aren’t activities that produce a whole lot of money at the present.There is one developer, of family land. There is one doctor. There is one retired professor who is back home after spending his career on the west coast. He says he feels like he never really left home, because home was always the family farm. He is tenth generation on his land. This is typical out here.
The kids in our children’s generation have had more options. More of them did go to college. The ones that stay sometimes have jobs they can do on the internet from home. That is going to be huge in allowing this community to survive. One young woman at the party moved to Chicago after college and she and her husband had extremely well paying careers there. When she got pregnant, she moved back “home” and her parents set them up in a house on family land. Her employers allow her to work from home. Her husband got busy looking for jobs in the area within commuting distance and joined her when he found one. People out here regularly commute an hour or more each way to work so they don’t have to move away. At that party were women who regularly travel to urban areas in this country or overseas, and women who have never been more than a couple of hundred miles away from home. There were many hand made baby gifts and the really expensive gifts were delivered to the honoree’s home, rather than opened at the shower. Although in a community this size, it’s pretty clear who has a lot of money and who doesn’t, people are very careful about the feelings of others. That is just how they were raised.
I don’t go to church, but for several years before she passed away I took my elderly neighbor, who was no longer able to drive, to the monthly church bingo lunches. That was an extremely economically diverse group, but racially segregated. My impression is that men hunt in very economically diverse groups and do the processing together. The doctor and the man who mows my yard (and pretty much lives off the charity of his neighbors) hang out together in the mornings at the corner store. All the men hang out there. That is a racially diverse group, an economically diverse group, and an educationally diverse group. They are there every single day except Sunday, when they are at church - at least hypothetically.