Quotations and Literature Forum

Howdy folks, Phantom Delta here. Just this afternoon as I was driving down Highway 70 I drove into Haywood County, Tennessee. They was cotton growing everywhere. The road carried me into Brownsville and I was greeted by a sign.

WELCOME TO BROWNSVILLE
Heart of the Tennessee Delta

The song, Delta Dawn, was written by a man from Brownsville but I forgot his name. Tina Turner is billed to be from Nutbush and that unicorporated town is also in Haywood County.

I thought it would be interesting to post the slogans that cities/towns in rural America use to promote their towns. Mayberry USA?

There is an unincorported town in Tennessee by the name of Finger. They don't have a slogan so I am open to any suggestions

It's the other end of the country, but Reno, NV has the slogan "The Biggest Little City in the World".

The city I live in, West Jordan, Utah, uses the slogan ""Home of the Good Neighbor".

Fillmore, Utah (a tiny town known to most only as a gas station on the way from Salt Lake to Las Vegas) has the slogan "You've Got a Friend in Fillmore."

We're always half asleep by the time we drive through there, so we make up continuations of that slogan, like this: "You've got a friend in Fillmore. His name is Clive and he wants to borrow some beer money."

Here's a page that lists lots of city or community slogans:
http://www.pe.net/~rksnow/mottos.htm

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Michael Moncur
Owner and maintainer, The Quotations Page

Here on the Grand Strand, which is roughly 60-70 miles of beach between Little River, NC, and Georgetown, SC, tourism promoters come up with new slogans every year, mostly variations of the "Welcome" and "family beach" themes. One of the most long-lived and popular is "Life's a beach."

In the late 80s, a bumper sticker/T-shirt slogan "Welcome to our beach -- now leave" was popular among the locals who are often exhausted by just trying to get to work and back during "The Season." But tourism is the hand that feeds us, and now that it's pretty much just one big season and the traffic never goes away, that sentiment has faded.

Wording varies, but local slogans often feature the following:

North Myrtle Beach is the home of Vanna White.

Ocean Drive is the birthplace of the shag, South Carolina's "state" dance.

Pawleys Island takes pride in its fame as "shabby chic."

My current favorite, because it's short and sweet: "Stay and play."

Also, hurricane slogans are popular. Many people still have a satellite image of Hurricane Hugo (1989) framed over their desk or on a T-shirt.

I grew up on Main Street in Small Town USA. Our community could be defined as a two-store town. In addition to the two grocery stores we also had two service stations and two restaurants (a Dairy Bar and Drive-In). The cotton gin was the only industrial building in town. There was an Elementry School that also served as the town hall. We had three churches for white folk and one church for black folk. The three churchs included Methodist, Baptist and Cumberland Presbyterian. The only cemetery in town was across the street from the Methodist Church. I was born into a Methoodist family. One of our stores was owned by a Methodist man and the other store was owned by a Baptist Deacon. One of the service stations was owned by a Methodist man. The other service station was owned by a Baptist man. One of the eating establisments was owned by Methodist folk and the other was owned by Baptist folk. Since our family was Methodist our trade was about 70% Methodist. My father worked as a Lawyer for the State but he also practiced law on the side. There was not a M.D. or medical clinic in town and there was not a drug store. The population of our town was just above three hundred folk.

The black church was off the beaten path and was called New Reedy Creek Baptist Church. Most of the black folk lived outside the City Limits. Most of them raised cotton. The town was unicorporated until the mid sixities when my Dad was elected as the first Mayor. He secured Federal Funds to build a water tank and install water pipes. He also secured state funds to pave the city streets that were gravel. He also secured money to buy the first Fire Truck and built the first City Hall.

The town has changed a bit over the past 40 years. There are signs at the City Limits that read: WELCOME TO MCLEMORESVILLE, HOME OF DIXIE CARTER.

Driving from one place to another, which I do all the time by the way, I've actually gotten quiet good at it in the past few years......
I ended up in Mississippi, which happened a lot when I first moved to Memphis, either Mississippi or Arkansas, I would cross a bridge and wonder which one it was going to be that day. I stumbled up on a small town called Walnut (unicorporated), I wonder about the unincorporated part, is that like a motel putting up a vacancy sign?
Do corporations drive around looking for a place to corporate for the night Sorry I get distracted I was just trying to tell what the welcome sign said,
WALNUT
COME GROW WITH US

I do believe this is my personal favorite welcome sign thus far, for the various reasons it appealed to my various emotions.odi

this isn't a slogan, but I once went to a little town named Intercourse, Penn. Me & my friends had fun inventing reasons for the town's name.

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What if what I see as red is really what you see as my green?

My favorite silly town name is "Browse". It's somewhere in the bleak desert between Salt Lake City and Las Vegas. No visible buildings, but it has a freeway exit and a sign or two.

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Michael Moncur
Owner and maintainer, The Quotations Page

Last summer, I went to Amherst, Massachusetts and somehow the town's
slogan is somewhat hidden in between the double doors of town hall. I can't be too sure that!!