1. The volunteer firemen all know where you live. . .
2. Because once a year they drive the biggest, coolest fire truck the town owns to your house to sell you tickets to the Fireman’s Ball
3. There’s a store on Main Street where you can buy comic books, flannel shirts, and penny candy, pay your electric bill, drop off your dry cleaning, and rent a tuxedo
4. You could keep a goat, if you wanted to
5. The Town Clerk knows how many cars you drive, how many dogs you own, and how much your house is appraised for, and always has time to chat about the weather, your children, and the latest town gossip
6. The Post Office can deliver mail even if it doesn’t have the street address on it
7. Your concept of “neighbor” includes people who live more than a mile away
8. The Town Dump is the epicenter of community life; and any candidates (local, state, and sometimes even federal) who hope to have a prayer of getting elected need to spend some serious time there
9. Everybody on your road knows your dog’s name
10. If you ask her nicely, the librarian will give you a key to the building so you can get in to do some research when it’s closed
11. There are legitimate reasons to own a pickup truck, a shotgun, and a tractor
12. Church suppers have really good food, and lots of it
13. Town Meeting. The entertainment value alone is worth every nickel of your property taxes
14. Whenever you tell somebody your phone number, you only give them the last four digits
15. You need to worry about how the bacteria in your septic tank are doing
16. People still refer to your house by the name of somebody who lived in it more than fifty years ago
17. Dirt roads, especially in mud season; it’s why God made four-wheel drive
18. Flannel is never out of place, even in church
19. Folks understand that an antique is something your great-grandmother may have owned, not a toy some baby-boomer played with in 1964
20. There have been only three murders in town, and they all happened more than a hundred years ago, but people still talk about them
21. The guy at the hardware store knows you have an odd-sized valve on your old boiler’s inlet pipe, and keeps a few of them in stock “just in case”
22. The Fed-Ex lady leaves your dog a biscuit with every package she delivers
23. You don’t need to be home for the plumber or the appliance repairman since you never lock your door; what’s more, before they leave they’ll let your dog out and bring in your mail
24. It’s pretty certain that, once a week, some organization will sponsor a car wash down at the Fire House
25. Every winter there’s piles of free sand and salt in front of the DPW garage
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