Nobody is rich but despite that fact, Elmwood Springs is a town that likes itself. You can see it in the fresh paint on the houses and in the clean, white curtains in the windows. The streetcar that goes out to Elmwood Lake has just been given a new coat of maroon and cream paint and the wooden seats shellacked to such a high polish they are hard not to slide out of. People are happy. You can see it in the sparkle in the cement in front of the movie theater, in the way the new stoplight blinks at you.
Most people are content.
You can tell by the well-fed cats and dogs that laze around on the sidewalks all over town and even if you are blind you can hear it in the laughter from the school yards and in the soft thud of the newspaper that hits the porches every afternoon. But the best way to tell about a town, any town, is to listen deep in the night . . . If you listen you will hear how everyone, even the chickens, who are the most nervous creatures on earth, sleep safe and sound through the night. Elmwood Springs, Missouri, is not perfect by any means but as far as little towns go it is about as near perfect as you can get without having to get downright sentimental about it or making up a bunch of lies. Everyone in Elmwood Springs and thereabouts remembers the day they put the radio tower in Neighbor Dorothy's backyard, and how excited they were that night when they first saw the bright red bulb on top of the tower, glowing like a cherry-red Christmas light way up in the black Missouri sky.