Evening Republican, Volume 23, Number 269, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 November 1920 — Home Town Helps [ARTICLE]

Home Town Helps

CITY HAS ITS DISADVANTAGES No “Neighbora" There, as There Are In the Smaller Towne of the Country. A big town offers advantages. There are unusual facilities for spending money, Impressive buildings to suggest man’s importance and show houses where one may be entertained, at a price, by experts in the entertaining business. There are smooth streets to encourage the consumption of gasoline and smooth promoters to encourage the cutting of eyeteeth. There are pedestrians wearing the latest styles and newspapers chuckling over the latest scandals. But there are no neighbors. In a city a good neighborhood is a part of town Inhabited by jieople who have plenty of spending money. In a small town a good neigliborhood is one inhabited by people who make good neighbors. A good neighbor is one who blds you good morning, calls to ask what he can do when you are sick, borrows your garden tools, keeps his chickens and children at home, never plays his phonograph after ten o'clock at night and takes a mild interest in all of your affairs. He calls you Tom, if. you happen to be a Tom, and feels free to enter your house by the kitchen door if that is the more convenient way. Are there any such in great cities? When the wife bakes and has unusually good luck the best loaf goes to the neighbor. It expresses friendship and her commendable pride in good craftsmanship. After a few d»y s the loaf returns in the form of a €herry pie, hot from the oven, or a bowl of dumplings cooked in the home-made blackberry wine left from the boiling of a ham. If one of the children cuts a finger the neighbor has iodine. He offers it freely, for tomorrow night he may forget to bring home a can of tobacco. Small-town people are one big family. If their mode of life makes secrets Impossible, it also lessens the number of things that should be kept secret; and their interest in one another _ an interest that might be very annoying to a big-town man—is inspired by kindness rather than curiosity. The man who asked “Who is my neighbor?” was not a small town man. else he would have known. —Robert Quillen In the Saturday Evening Post.