Rural living is not as idyllic as it used to be. People are friendly enough, but their best friends are not always their closest neighbors. I suppose Henry Ford is to blame for that. With the proliferation of the automobile, people started choosing their friends from farther away. Looking back on it, the people in our old Chicago neighborhoods were about as friendly and caring as the people of Cheboygan are today. I don't know what it was, or still is, like downtown because I didn't spend a lot of time there. Uncle Ken, are the people of Marina City more friendly with each other than they are with people of other apartment complexes? I believe there are two buildings in Marina City. Are the people in one building more bonded to each other than they are to people in the other building?
Of course, the more people in a community, the more need for rules and regulations, but I don't think there is a magic number like Dunbar says. I already spoke about population density, but another factor is diversity, or lack thereof. It is possible for diverse groups to get long well, if they have something in common that overshadows their differences but, in general, "birds of a feather flock together".
"Mackinaw peaches" must be brand name, because nobody around here grows peaches commercially. A few people might have a peach tree in their yards, but the pickins are too slim to justify making a career out of it. Apples used to be a big business around here, but the big operators started phasing out in the 1970s. It's not that apples won't grow well here, but there are places where they grow better, and our local growers could no longer compete with them. As far as I know, the Fruit Belt of Michigan runs along the Lake Michigan shore from the Indiana border to Traverse City. The lake serves as kind of a climate buffer that protects that zone from the worst that winter throws at us. They frequently get more snow than we do, but it melts sooner in the spring and insulates the ground while it's there.
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