I travelled to O—, Wisconsin this week, and was reminded, yet again, of the quirkiness of small towns. There’s something infinitely charming and yet infinitely creepy about towns where everyone knows everyone else. Where, when a stranger runs in to the bank, wailing about this old man who is living in a house with dead animals in bits on the lawn and cat pelts stuck in the windows to keep the flies out, the folks in the bank wiggle and grin and say, with pride, “Yeah, that old man Petersham is a real card, int he?”
The stranger (yes. That’d be me) says, “Where’s the police station? I need to speak to a police officer.”
And the small town folks scratch their heads and say something like, “Well, Bill’s got a closet in the basement of the library, but you’d be best going on out to his house. He’s probably taking a nap right around now.”