No Matter Which Candidate Wins...

....I hope these things will never change about my old-fashioned town:

Church bells ring every morning at 9:00 a.m.,noon and 6 p.m. (and even more often on Sundays).

Milk is still delivered to some homes by milk trucks.

Many ladies wear short-sleeved dusters when they sweep their walks and do their housework.

People of all ages hold doors open for me at convenience stores and other shops.

Many of our streets have no houses built after 1950. Most houses have two stories, many have three and nearly all have basements.

Some women still wear those clear plastic, accordion-fold rain hats which tie under your neck. (I pulled one out of my purse and my friends in one accord squealed, "Oh! I haven't seen one of those in years!")

The Sunday morning newspaper is delivered by boys pulling wooden-sided wagons up and down the same streets where their great-grandfathers delivered papers as boys.

There's a supermarket which has been owned by one family over 70 years. People are fiercely loyal to keeping it open no matter how many big, new supermarkets spring-up nearby.

We have ice cream trucks in summer and block parties and parades, too.

Most of our neighborhoods have huge trees along their sidewalks resembling long, graceful arbors above the center of the street.

People sit on their front porches in the afternoons and sultry evenings and chat with neighbors walking by.

Our Main Street is full of original 1800's brick-front buildings, some with old business names still stamped high at the top. In the middle is our 1920's newly- restored theater, with its velvet curtains, huge crystal chandelier, oval ticket booth, calliope organ and too many original old touches to list. Step through the door for a movie or a play and you step back 80 years.

It's not unusual to find four generations of one family living here in town. Nor is it unusual for your neighbor to have lived in her home anywhere from 40 to 70 years. Happens all the time.