I spent my early childhood in Waco, Texas. Not many memories about the town itself, except that it was really hot during the summers. I remember seeing the Baylor Bears mascot (an actual bear, not a guy in a costume), and going to the Brazos River Festival. It was very hot and there was bluegrass music. I think there might have been mimes.
Most of the rest of my life, I've lived in Denton, Texas, which is about a 40 min. drive north of Dallas and Fort Worth (about equally distant from both). It was a small town when we moved here in the mid-1980s, despite having two relatively large colleges (UNT and TWU), but it's been growing very rapidly recently. A lot of the Scott Bakula movie Necessary Roughness was filmed here. I'm also told that the movie version of The Rocky Horror Picture Show is somehow related to Denton. Thanks largely to the two colleges, Denton has a good local music scene, although not as good in recent years as it was a decade or so ago. We have a lovely historical courthouse (hardly used as a court anymore, it has a museum inside it) surrounded by popular locally-owned businesses. Denton was once the stomping grounds of local outlaw and folk-hero Sam Bass, sometimes described as a wild west Robinhood.
During college and for awhile after, I was in Conway, Arkansas. Arkansas is pretty, but I would never move back. Conway is a lot like Denton used to be when I was younger, but without as much historical culture and without the night clubs. It's one of the only two places in Arkansas I'd consider living if I was willing to consider living in Arkansas at all (unfortunately, it's also one of the parts of Arkansas that isn't pretty). The other is Little Rock. Conway has a local festival called--get this--Toad Suck Days. There is a park just outside of Conway named Toad Suck. Most of the places in Conway that I would want to go were within reasonable walking distance from my school campus, which was nice, since I didn't have a car at the time.
After Conway, I lived in Beebe, Arkansas. Not much to say about Beebe. It's a tiny town with a tiny college, and not much to do or many places to go. It wasn't unpleasant per se, just boring. Now I'm back in Denton again.
I never thought about it until just now, but I have never lived in a town that didn't have at least one college in it. Hmm.