I'm in the throes of editing a memoir that a publisher read once already and suggested numerous reworkings. The following is a new introduction I'm working on. Is it too corny or overdone? Port Neville on Rupert Island was a one-horse town when I grew up there in the 1950s and 1960s, except that there wasn’t even a horse. There was a herd of cows though, belonging to the Holmgren family who lived on the flats at the estuary of the Nimpkish river, but those cows spent more time in the village pillaging cardboard boxes out of people’s sheds than grazing on the flats.
I'd flip the order of the phrases of the first line so that the image is all packed together. That way you don't start the joke and interrupt it (when I grew up there . . .) before the punchline. When I grew up in Port Neville on Rupert Island in the '50s and '60s, it was a one-horse town without a horse. And I think the joke is fine, haha. It amused me. It sets a whimsical tone, so it's important to establish that fast if that's what you're aiming for.
It lacks a hook, while your opening is descriptive there is no reason to keep reading. The town and river you mention only mean something to someone would recognize the names. You grew up in small rural town so what made it different? What happened or changed you that made it part of the story. When I grew up in Port Neville on Rupert Island in the '50s and '60s, it was a one-horse town without a horse, someone stole it. The cows were hooligans and would eat anything they could find, nothing was as it appeared.
