Guides to Daily Living

Certain things were just known in Maycomb: No Crawford Minds His Own Business; Every Third Merriweather is Morbid, The Truth is Not in the Delafields; All the Burfords Walk Like That...These things were "simply guides to daily living": Never take a check from a Delafield without calling the bank and Miss Maudie's shoulder stoops because she was a Burford. Are there similar guides to daily living in Norwalk today? Do you think that these "guides" developed because Maycomb was a small town and people knew each other well and knew their parents, etc.?