Tom and Lew: While on the topic of television shows, I was always impressed by the original “Little House on the Prairie” series, and the fact that Walnut Grove did not have any political structure or sheriff’s gang to contend with. Whatever difficulties arose were handled spontaneously and informally by the townspeople themselves: no cavalry, no national guard troops, no SWAT teams. I remember one episode in which a family of dishonest slugs came to town and began taking advantage – through theft, violence, and fraud – of the good people of the town. When the locals had their fill of these thugs, they peacefully but firmly marched them out of town and told them they were no longer welcome in Walnut Grove.
My wife is from a small town of some 1,500 people. On one visit there a few years ago, I found a few World War I rifle shells that I thought it best to dispose of, but not by just throwing them into the trash that could result in harm to others. I suspected they had no powder in them, but decided to go over to the town marshal’s to be checked. The clerk who worked there informed me that the two deputies had been gone all day: helping an owner look for a lost dog. I thought that, if people insist on having a police force, having officers who spent their hours looking for lost dogs – or getting a cat out of a tree – would be more tolerable than what we have in major cities.
7:04 pm on July 21, 2012
