Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(mainly US) a generic term for any small, rural town.

1911		‘Sing Sing No. 57,700’ My View on Books in N.Y. Times Mag. 21 May 7/4: [He] sends that raw proposition from the city out among the Hicks at Hicksville and makes him beat them to a frazzle.
1921		Fair Play (Missouri) 1:2 30 Apr. n.p.: He came from Hicksville, but Oh Boy! - how he could dance.
1922		Morn. Tulsa Dly World (OK) 10 Sept. 15/1: Orpheum opens today with Vaudeville [...] Eileen Percy in ‘From Hicksville to Broadway’.
1933		S. Walker Night Club Era 24: A judge in the Bronx said it was all right for a woman to smoke on the street (‘What do you think this is, Hicksville?’).
1942		Berrey & Van den Bark Amer. Thes. Sl.
1946		Mezzrow & Wolfe Really the Blues 134: Never a dull moment in Hicksville.
1960		R.F. Bauerle ‘Miscellany’ in AS XXXV:4 312: It has combined with numerous nouns to indicate a country town (hickville, jakeville, mudville, yokelville).
1964		‘Charles Barrett’ Address: Kings Cross 54: ‘There’s not a thing to do in Hicksville. Boring jobs, boring people’.
1979		S. King Long Walk in Bachman Books (1995) 246: There ya go, hicksville!
1989		H. Rawson Dict. of Invective (1991) 12: Cityfolk have always disparaged countryfolk (bumpkins, hicks, hillbillies, rubes, etc) and the places they live (the boondocks, hicksville, podunk, and the sticks).
1999		Guardian Rev. 8 Oct. 5: Ike journeys to hicksville to get the low down on her.
2001		J. Stahl Plainclothes Naked (2002) 251: Doubtless the crumb who’d mocked him [...] was lolling around some swanky office, cackling [...] about the rube down in Hicksville, Pennsylvania.
2015		S. King Finders Keepers (2016) 29: There would be lots of local traffic pooting along from one Hicksville to the next.
2019		Twitter 2 Feb. 🌐 I moved to London in early 90s, on a trip back to my small hometown, a nosey busybody said to me ‘Heard you’d been seen in that Soho. What were you doing there?’ I’m so glad I escaped Hicksville.
2019		C. Hammer Silver [ebook] ‘Hard enough keeping you in the country, let alone Hicksville, New South Wales’.