- May not be in the inner circle
Frank and I are both perfectly capable of making new friends. People told me before I moved to New Orleans that I would NEVER be accepted by New Orleanians because they are so stand-offish, worse than any other city in America because families have lived here for hundreds of years and never move (true). I guess it took me about 10 minutes before I was accepted by a large number of native New Orleanians who became my friends. This included Frank but I did not even meet him through my other friends here. I think this "inner circle" baloney is just an excuse put forth by people that do not want to put the work into finding new friends and do not respect local residents for who they are and what they and those like them have accomplished. Also they do not respect that some local residents may like you a lot but may already have too many friends (so keep looking!). And yes, it is WORK and not fun to find new friends IMO but once you have them, the fun part starts.
- Health care
Like some other small towns, Springfield has great health care - - more level one trauma centers than New Orleans, for example, at least back then. I haven't checked lately. Not only that, they send people to St. Louis hospitals by helicopter if/when needed. I admit that good health care was one of our criteria when we were looking for another town to live in.
- Transportation
I wonder if small towns have uber available. Don't really know. We had planned to live in a neighborhood less than a mile from a grocery store and hospital. We don't travel.
- A hard driving FIRE type may rub current residents the wrong way
Oh well, time to hang up the idea of retiring anywhere in a small town! (just joking) Seriously if one cannot get along with anyone in a town at all (kind of a ridiculous hypothesis), I don't know why one would want to move there. We got along with people in Springfield just fine, and loved what we perceived as solid American values that many seemed to have there.
- Small now, but if everyone moves there, how long?
Community changes are always a concern no matter where one lives. Right now here in New Orleans we are concerned about the possibility of increasing crime and chaos. However, it hasn't seemed to have become any worse in the past ten years or so. It only needs to stay liveable for another 20-30 years for us, because after that it is likely that we'll be gone.