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Show " a mmt I Home Town Friendliness Can Be Greatest Asset to Boost Locality There is a strong and abiding friendliness about most small towns that is difficult to pin down in terms of mere words. While it is virtually impossible to describe, we can agree that in our own community this friendliness is the inner in-ner spirit of the toivn, and one of its most valued assets. Walking along the street at night past the homes of iriends and neighbors, knowing that they are at ease with their families and being amused or A . mm lit!!! FEATURE annoyed by the neivest singing commercial, imparts to one a vivid feeling of friendliness and belong' ing. This is an experience ive all have known, a mutual ground of good will upon which ice have met and will meet again. The impression of community faith is increased as we walk up the street in the morning, knowing that we will be greeted perhaps a little hurriedly and off - handedly because we are familiar fixtures but spoken to just the same by our friends. It's good to know the kids and the familiar streets and buildings and the jobs that are waiting for our daily application of effort. Our small toun means a nearness, a feeling of particular particu-lar kinship for the things that count up to make our community com-munity the most agreeable place it is. But let us not imply that the world beyond our community com-munity is lacking in this quality which is found so readily in small towns. It is simply harder to locate in a large city, where people, by virtue of their very numbers, have less opportunity op-portunity to know one another. We have friends in nearby cities, for instance, who have lived in the same apartment house for years without ever having become acquainted with the people next door. They would like to know their neighbors, neigh-bors, perhaps, but they have neither the time nor the common com-mon interests ivhich are needed to establish friendship. Here, however, we do have the time, and a common interestthis in-terestthis town. All of us, directly or indirectly, are dependent de-pendent upon each other, and our entire lives revolve about our community. With the need for understanding being as great as it is today, it seems that the friendliness we have here could be our greatest asset, even from a practical, material ma-terial point of vieic. An extra, spontaneous act of friendliness and kindness to the stranger in our community may impel him to come this way again. And it is not unlikely that friendliness alone some day could cause a new family to move into this town to settle down and stay. There is no other coin, in fact, that can bring this kind of riches. To examine another facet of the situation industry, desperately des-perately in need of homes aivay from crowded and congested areas, is searching constantly for friendly, strong, cooperative coopera-tive communities in which to relocate. As an illustration, suppose you needed a new piece of farm machinery. And suppose the questions of credit, quality, quali-ty, and price were equal between two firms competing for your business. But if one of those firms was especially friendly to you, greeted you pleasantly and treated you courteously, cour-teously, while the other was indif' ferent (ivhich is a passive form of rudeness ), there icould be no question ques-tion as to where you would take your business. It is much the same ivith communities. com-munities. Man is not naturally anti-social. If he were, there would be no toivnsof any size, sliape, or character. People I ke to be friendly, friend-ly, and they move into and become rMyOUR TOWN A- established in communities that ere receptive to their friendliness and return it in kind. This is an old, old lesson; yet it is one that too many of us have learned only imperfectly. But look about you at the strongly woven carpet of good will and mutual trust upon which our town rests. Dwell for a conscious moment in the friendliness pervading all our local actions, businesses, and ambitions. It should be argument enough to convince us that ice ought to lose no time in starting to sell our greatest asset. |