Your hometown is really nice looking, and I always like going to communities that have main streets. You captured your town at a really nice time with the sun's position being perfect.

You know, your town's streetlights are very similar to what we have here in Chicago! If you did not mention your town is in Missouri, then I would have thought I was looking at one of Chicago's neighbourhoods!

Ironically, my hometown does not have any main streets! Instead, the entire city is on a massive grid system that is rarely interrupted. Every street is a main street, and can carry you from one side of the city to the other! I caught the center of the city, which is entirely filled with victorian businesses and offices- none older than the late 1910's.

Thanks for the comment! :3

No problem about the comment!

Chicago is exactly like your hometown because it is on a grid pattern, too. There is a main street every mile in every direction, and every couple of miles there is a diagonal street which usually acts a shortcut between neighbourhoods. Chicago is actually made up of a bunch of old towns such as your hometown, and it is amazing how the architecture of your town is what you can find without much, if any difference, in many parts of Chicago which were annexed by the City during the early 1900s.

Is your town's downtown pretty all right, or are a lot of businesses closed? At least on the Illinois side of the border I have seen towns like yours which are kind of empty despite the nice downtown area.

Most businesses on the square are open with middle-class shopping- stuff like tuxedos, shoe shops, coffee shops, and spas. Further down on the same street I'm on in the photograph they become more derelict- where successful businesses haven't existed since the 1980's, and the Victorian buildings they were in are left to ruin. Our city-planning commissioners are... fairly daft, I think.

What you describe is the same struggle that some suburbs in Chicagoland have been having for years. At least in the City itself there was a point in time areas such as your hometown went dereclict, but gentrification have transformed those old buildings into liveable spaces with some pretty neat reuses. Out in the suburbs some towns have made a selling point of their old downtowns balancing out chain stores with local ones which work out well. In other towns the old downtown areas have gone downhill due to the lack of support of the folks running the town or the local Wal-Mart coming in taking out everything. This goes to what I say that the most important government in all of our lives is local which is why I always vote in local elections.

Well, if it means anything, your hometown does look quite nice, and it seems like a great place to hang out year round. Does your town decorate its downtown pretty well during holidays such as Thanksgiving, Christmas, and the 4th of July?

It hangs flags for all national days, has both an Oktoberfest celebration, but also a large Halloween celebration, and the entire square and all the parks are decorated for Christmas- in some cases rather extravagantly. It's a tight-knit little Ozark town. :3

Still, the town has a ton of issues to face. I've voted against all the current incumbents in the local elections, as I feel they are corrupt and not doing the job they should be doing.

Your town sounds very nice to do those events, and it is impressive that you all do an Oktoberfest. The funny thing here in Chicago is that I have noticed a couple of towns doing their Oktoberfest during this past weekend which makes no sense to me which leads to my next point...

In a lot of small towns and suburbs in the Chicagoland area those places are like fiefdoms with the same group of folks running the place for years. Many times the leadership is very Soviet-style with those folks more or less dictating to everyone how things should be done even if those demands are not based on facts or commonsense. Also, a lot of those folks can be really old and resistent to change or mentally be in a totally different time even though things have evolved. It is super hard to get voters fired up for local elections, and everyone only wants to vote in the national ones which no doubt gets frustrating when competant people try to unseat the incompetant incumbants.

Well, I am an optimist by nature, and the internet has revolutionized local elections because now through things such as Facebook and YouTube candidates with a shoestring budget can have a shot at defeating entrenched incumbants especially those resistant to technology. What I mean is technology can link people like never before and bring up issues that might have been otherwise buried if we solely depended on a town newspaper or something along those lines.

We've had the same Sheriff since 1988. The same city councilor since 1992. The mayor gets tossed out every election and replaced with some football or basketball coach that is equally as incompetent.

Although the town is going through a bit of a youth revolution. Thank God. We actually have someone on the city board that is under 50! XD