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From Jonathan Butler, Tech Tool for Life:

When I was growing up in Ticonderoga, NY, (non-migratory population: eight-thousand one-hundred thirty-two and not a soul more, thank you very much) I found myself cursing my seemingly eternal confinement in such a small, unexciting, low-key environment. I recall my mother's panicked look when, in the hormonal tempest of adolescence, I proclaimed my desire to move to the Big Apple. At the time, I thought she was disturbed by the thought that her choke-hold on my life would someday be broken. From my current, less viciously subjective vantage point in the heart of the Village Beautiful, I have come to realize that the source of her concern was a more traditional, perhaps even instinctive desire to see her child grow to be a happy, calm, rational adult. In other words, she wanted me to live in a small town.

I do not mean to suggest that one is prevented from achieving a similarly blissful existence by living in a city, suburb, or even middle-sized town. It's just that there are some undefinable elements that make me unspeakably happy to be living in a small town. Fortunately, these intangibles sometimes coalesce into a sort of totem of the small town life. I have collected a few of these for you.

For example, the weekly newspaper. The fact that most events of importance which occur in Williamstown (and some of no importance that just happen to have taken place within a few miles) can all be described in a 16-page newspaper -- issued once a week with enough spare real estate for some classifieds and a crossword -- indicates the ease of regional issues on the political digestive system. This relaxed local pace gives me more time than the average citizen to complain about the state of the nation as a whole.

Another delightful physical manifestation of the small town mentality is, more accurately, the lack of a physical manifestation of city culture. I am referring to the near-absence of a certain electronic trinket famed for interrupting tender moments and motion pictures. Alas, I have a pager grafted to my hip due to the frequent forty-day floods, plagues of locusts, and other non-Internet friendly Biblical disasters that I must contend with on my job. But in that respect, I am something of a Williamstown novelty. I have on occasion been asked what "kind of doctor" I am by people who spot the little black box at my side. If this Tripod thing doesn't pan out, I could probably set up a practice with few, if any, questions asked.

For me, the pinnacle of the local small town life is somewhat unusual, and some would understandably question its practicality. But Atlantis and Roswell be damned; though there are no men with gills or alien spacecraft, and even though there's almost no possibility of this appearing on "The X-Files," I am nonetheless compelled to reveal the existence of a curious, inexplicable, and extremely fortunate phenomenon. I refer to the one and only All-Night Honor-System Sweet-Corn-and-Tomato Farmstand.

Honest. Not 15 miles from my house, just over the border into the wildernesses of Vermont, there rests by the side of the road an old barn, at the entrance of which is a small sheltered stand containing the untold bounty of the earth. Hidden among the piles of fresh sweet corn, tomatoes, and zucchini is a small cardboard box with "Honor System" scrawled on it in red crayon. Granted, one doesn't often have an undeniable craving for fresh squash at 3 in the morning, but I feel better just knowing it's there.

I neither expect nor desire a tide of converts to flood in from nearby metropolitan areas to make my adopted home town a Mecca Of All That Is Good. Williamstown is not ideal for everyone, just ideal for a small-town boy like me -- as my mother would be glad to tell you.

--Jonathan

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Read more "Letters from Tripod" in the archive.

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