Small Town USA and the Moose Lady

Above: My small-town America

I'm weary of writing about damn airplanes. How about a change of pace?

How about small-town America and patriotism?

I was getting a little depressed recently with that Moose Lady shooting her mouth off about how all of us who don't live in some crappy hole like Wasilla, Alaska, are "un-American" -- lacking, as we are, in small-town virtues, whatever they are.

And then it occurred to me. I live in small-town America. In a town with a population a little less than Wasilla, Alaska. A town with working gas lamps along the streets, a train station where I can get to New York in 25 minutes, a wonderful library where nobody tries to ban books; a town with nice, helpful family people who do not measure their lives in six-packs ... the whole nine yards of small-town, patriotic America. Unlike Wasilla, my town does not have a polluted, dead lake and a collection of ugly big-box stores.

At the train station in my small town, there is a small monument with eight names on it. The names of American citizens, my neighbors in my small town, population 8,000, who were murdered in the terrorist attacks of 9-11.

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