Small Town Charm: With Internet

I read a warm, glowing account of life in small town America this week. It started with something like "Take a step back in time, to a simpler world without the cares and worries of today."

I don't know where that place is: but it's not like any small town I know. Sure, the buildings downtown are mostly around a hundred years old. That's partly because the town's grown out more than up. In our case, mostly toward the Interstate. Those old fashioned storefronts reappeared a few years ago, after City Hall realized that folks passing through liked the olde towne look.

What you see today is 'authentic:' but it's what we got after tearing off paneling set up in the fifties and sixties. It took a lot of sandblasting, paint, and elbow grease to get something like fifty years of cobwebs, bat droppings, and, in one case, smoke, removed.

Are we isolated? Some folks in Loonfoot Falls don't have a full telephone/cable/Internet hookup in their homes: but it's a matter of choice or economic necessity. The technology's there, ready to be connected.

Our Internet services use the newish cable that's been laid alongside the Interstate. Cable television comes in mostly from satellites. The lot behind Vidiconnections is covered with dish antennas, and so is the ground around another cable service's mast a few miles outside town.

It's good that folks think nice thoughts about small towns in America. I sort of like it here, myself. But let's get real.