What was your commute time to the big city? Being in a small community but being within a daily commute of a big city seems to make you a bedroom community, not an isolated community.
About 20-30 minutes into town. That town was traditionally agricultural but became what was considered the bedroom community for going another hour out to where a lot of people worked, or one more hour out to where more people worked. All that aside, rural means relating to the countryside rather than in town. We were out of town for sure.