Small townness

Look up “town” in the dictionary. It says “smaller than a city, larger than a village.” A village is “smaller than a town, larger than a hamlet.” We can do better.The smallest is the general store. Occasionally you can find one of these tucked away in a remote rural area. Mostly they are from a bygone era. It often also serves as the post office, liquor store and where you can buy ammunition and traps. It may have a cracker barrel and a couple of oldsters playing checkers. You can usually get a newspaper here, although maybe not today’s.Then somebody comes along and opens another store or business; a sawmill maybe. Now we have a hamlet. Do not confuse with a small roast pig or the Melancholy Prince of Denmark. A hamlet invites further development versus a general store which would just as soon you built your noisy sawmill on t’other side of the mountain. Business begets business until you have to build a street. Presto! A village.Now you can have an inn with a tavern. Although you are not an actual destination, you are a stopover on the way to one. The last item needed to complete your village is an idiot. Hopefully by now there is a spreading chestnut tree for your smithy.After a while, without even realizing it, a town evolves. Now you are a destination. People “go into town,” whereas they would never think of “going into village.” I think there has to be a cross street or two, also. Somewhere along the way the village idiot found a new position, politics most likely, and you have upgraded to a town drunk.If the town is doing it right, it will continue to grow until it evolves into a city. The streets are paved, often with good intentions. Cities have a lot of rules to keep the inhabitants from killing one another. The city also needs a full-time police force to do the paperwork after they have killed one another. The town drunk quietly disappears. What you now have are city slickers. These are well-dressed, clever fellows who know what pocket you keep your wallet in.Finally, the cities begin to grow into one another, merging into one, huge and tangled web of public and private transportation. Behold the megalopolis! It is unclear which laws to obey. Can I go right on red? My city says yes, but yours says no. There are now competing agencies, each trying to outdo the other. Who you gonna call; village, town, county, city, state or federal? By the way, they all need tax money.I think I will open a little general store out in the country somewhere. Never mind where.Bill Abrams resides in Pine Plains.