There is a dividing line of size that separates successful small towns from failures. Above a certain limit – which varies for many factors – a town can be a working economic unit, a community where most of the needs of the people living there are met within the community. Below that line, the mutual support structure breaks down, and the community breaks down with it, becoming mostly just a collection of houses located close together.

Hartford, Nebraska, was well below that dividing line.

In times that some of its residents could remember, Hartford had been a successful economic unit. There had been schools, a feed mill, a number of businesses such as a gas station, a restaurant, a general store that had a good selection of things including dry goods, a small storefront grocery store, and a few other retail concerns of that nature. A doctor once had office hours two days a week, and there had been a small bank.

But one by one they went away.

The schools had been one of the first things to go – they were just too small. The high school consolidated with a school in a larger community a few miles away in hopes of giving its students a better education. The elementary school hung on for many years, but in time the building became tattered and too expensive to maintain, so every day during the school year the yellow school buses hauled the kids out of town and back again.

Other things held on for a while longer, but as time went on, they disappeared, too – the bank, the general store, the grocery store, and the doctor. In time the feed mill closed, partly because smaller farms in the area consolidated with bigger ones, and the bigger farms found it more economical to have their own feed milling operations. A number of jobs went away when the feed mill closed, and after a while the bank consolidated with another bank. It stayed open for a while as a branch, but then it too closed.

When Jane had been a small girl, Main Street – the only business district – had mostly consisted of storefronts that had long been closed and boarded up. One of the buildings went down in a windstorm, and another one burned. The fire department said the cause was probably electrical, but there were rumors that the owner was just as happy to see it gone. The gas station held on for a while longer, and the owner tried to convert it into something of a convenience store, but in time it had to close, too. After it was gone, if someone wanted gas, it was a ten-mile drive to get it, and even farther to get a loaf of bread.

After they got off Interstate 80 and had lunch, Jane told Rick all this and more as she drove the BMW toward Hartford – it was something to talk about, after all.

“Grandma Mavis ran the restaurant, and she held out longer than anyone else,” Jane explained. “Honestly, I think it was more force of habit than anything else, because I don’t think she made much money if she made anything at all the last few years. It really wasn’t much of a restaurant, just a breakfast and lunch place, and she didn’t have much of a menu, but it was the last place in Hartford where people could get together to be neighbors. But finally it reached the point where she wasn’t taking in enough money to keep the doors open, even if she didn’t pay herself. I’ve heard people say since that when she closed was the day that what was really left of Hartford died.”

“That’s really sad, you know?” Rick replied, at least a little interested in what Jane was saying. “Wychbold is pretty small, but it’s nothing like that.”

“It’s not the first place it’s happened. I’ve seen the same thing in other little towns around here, and when I was going to school at Greeley I heard the same story from other country kids. There used to be a lot of little farms. Well, not real little, several hundred acres. Now there’s only a few big ones, and not much to keep people around a place like Hartford.”

“You make it sound pretty bleak.”

“It is bleak. It might not have been a bad place to live when Grandma Mavis was a little girl, and I sure heard enough about that as I was growing up. But growing up here, well, I was mostly looking forward to getting out and staying out. I wasn’t the only one of the kids I knew in town who felt that way. You’d have to be a fool to want to live here now.”

“How long are we going to stay there?”

“No longer than we have to,” Jane crinkled her nose a little. “It depends on the wind direction a little.”

“Wind direction?”

“Yeah, there’s a big hog farm not all that far out of town. It stinks to high heaven. If the wind is out of the southwest I might not even slow down. If it’s that bad, maybe we could take another shot at it on our way back to Boulder. There’s a big dairy, a confined feeding operation, to the west. That smells of manure too, but not quite as bad.” She glanced out the window, then added, “It looks like it’s out of the northwest, so we might be able to spend a few hours, but I don’t want to spend any more time here than necessary. Really, all I want to do is to make it known that I’m married now, and that I’ve got a real nice husband who can afford a BMW. We don’t have to tell anyone any more than that.”

“You haven’t told them we’re married, I take it?”

“No, I haven’t. I didn’t want to for at least a little while, just in case things didn’t work out with us. I suppose I should have called or written or something, but well, I just haven’t. Have you told your folks?”

“No, I haven’t,” he admitted. “I don’t think anyone in Wychbold would believe I was capable of being married, let alone to as pretty and as nice a woman as you are. They’ll have to see you in the flesh to believe it, and there will be those who still won’t.”

“We’re just going to have to make believers of everyone, aren’t we?” She laughed for a moment, then went on, “Rick, this is not going to be at all easy. I probably ought to tell you that my folks are pretty old. I was a real late baby and I wasn’t born until after my brothers and my sister were married and moved away. They will probably be all right, but Grandma Mavis lives with my folks, and she can be pretty sour and snappy. She’s one of those kinds of people who thinks that whatever someone else says or does, it’s the wrong thing, and is real quick to tell them about it. God alone knows how she managed to run as public a business as a restaurant in Hartford as long as she did the way she tried to piss everyone off.”

“She sounds like a real piece of work.”

“No fooling, and she is. She got married, oh hell, back after World War II sometime, and one day the guy left her with two kids. She never heard from him again, but I’ll tell you what, she’s bitched about him every time you turn around for over half a century.”

“She never got married again?”

“Oh, hell no. Any man who ever thought about it knew what they would be getting themselves into. Frankly, I don’t blame the guy for taking off, but don’t ever let her hear that I think that. Look, I know you don’t like strangers, and in this case I won’t blame you. But don’t just clam up and say nothing. You don’t have to say much, but don’t just freeze up, either. I’ll do most of the talking. We won’t be there long and we’ll both be happy to be on our way.”

“All right, Jane,” he sighed. “This sounds like it’s going to be pretty uncomfortable for me, but I’ll try to not let it get to me too much.”

The BMW carried them down the road between fields of head-high corn, until up ahead they could see the cluster of trees that denoted a small town – it was one of the few reasons trees were allowed to grow at all. A couple of miles out of town the reeking stench of the hog farm penetrated the car. Fortunately it didn’t last long; after a mile or so it was followed by the less intense cow manure smell, but fortunately they ran out of that well before they reached town.

It had been a while since Jane had been there – not long enough – and mostly she’d been able to come up with reasons to not come home for a visit, although sometimes those reasons were not exactly good ones. “Having you with me so I can show you off a little is the main reason I want to come back in the first place,” she told her husband.

Jane’s description of Main Street proved to be right: not much was there, just a few buildings and those were closed. Most of the buildings had been boarded up and appeared run-down. She pointed at one building where there still was a sign reading, “Hartford Restaurant,” but the building was also boarded up, and a tattered “Closed” sign was prominent on the front door. The only building that looked to actually be in use was a small post office, and Jane commented that it might not last much longer, either.

A little past what there was of downtown, Jane turned the Beemer off onto one of the few side streets, made another turn, passed the old school building, which was also tattered and boarded up. The yard was filled with weeds that had to have grown there for years. She came to a stop in front of a house across from the school that didn’t appear to be in good shape, although it was not as run-down as some others on the block. “Well, here we are,” she sighed. “Wish us luck.”

“It doesn’t look like it’s that bad,” Rick commented.

“Dad tries to keep it up,” Jane replied apologetically, “But it’s getting to be more than he can handle. But then, why should he bother? Who would want to buy it?”

“I suppose,” he sighed as he unbuckled his seat belt. “But it sure seems sad.”

“It is.” Jane got out of the driver’s side, stretched, and brushed her dress back into place. “Well, here we go.”

It was hot, and a window air conditioner had probably been loud enough that no one noticed them pulling up. Side by side and holding hands they walked up onto the front porch where Jane knocked on the door. An older woman, short and chubby with gray hair, opened it, and gasped in surprise. “Jane!” she said. “What are you doing here?”

“Hi, Mom,” she replied as the woman opened the door wide for them. “Rick and I are on our way east, so we thought we’d stop off and say hello.”

“Well, my, this is a surprise! Come on in! It’s been too long since we’ve seen you. How long can you stay?”

“Not long,” she replied, stopping to give her mother a brief hug. “We’ve got things we have to do.”

The woman turned and shouted into the house. “George! Mother! Jane just dropped in!”

In a moment, an older, heavy-set man with a scrubby beard came in from what obviously was the kitchen, followed by a wizened, elderly woman who seemed to bear a perpetual frown. “Jane,” the man said. “It’s good to see you home. How have you been?”

“Not bad, Dad,” she said, giving him a hug, too. “Rick, this is my dad, George, my mother, Linda, and my grandmother, Mavis. Everybody, this is my husband, Rick.”

“Husband?” Linda gushed. “You got married? When did this happen?”

“Not long ago.”

“Jane, you never told us anything about having a boyfriend, and married?”

“It happened pretty quick, Mom,” Jane replied. “We’ve been pretty busy.”

“Well, you could have told us something.”

“Things happened pretty quickly,” she shrugged.

“They happen that way when you get pregnant,” Mavis sneered.

“Yes it does, but I’m not pregnant. Not yet, anyway,” Jane smiled, thinking that as short a time as she’d known Rick she wouldn’t have had a chance to find out if she were pregnant, anyway. But that was something her family didn’t need to know.

“Well, Rick, good to meet you,” George said, extending his hand. “I hope Jane hasn’t driven you crazy yet.”

“No,” Rick said softly. “She’s very nice.”

“Well, sit down, sit down,” Linda said. “Can I get you anything? Have you eaten?”

“Yes, Mom, we ate after we got off the Interstate. I could stand a Pepsi or something, though.”

“Rick, can I get you anything?”

“That sounds good,” he replied no louder than before.

“I’ll go get some,” she said.

George glanced out the window. “That sure seems like a nice car you’re driving,” he commented.

“It’s just a rental,” Jane replied. “We’re getting around with my old Nissan, but it’s really not up for a long trip any more. That’s part of the reason I haven’t been back in a while. It still gets us around town all right.”

“You could have rented a cheaper car and saved a little money,” Mavis said. “That’s important for a young couple.”

“We got a deal on it that was too good to pass up. It’s a nice car.”

“Are you still working at that restaurant?”

“No, I gave that up when we got married,” Jane explained. “It’s a little too far from our apartment, especially getting along with one car. When things get settled down I’ll find something else.”

“Perhaps you shouldn’t have given it up. In as big as town as Boulder, isn’t there a bus or something like that?”

“It just wouldn’t have worked,” Jane replied, trying to ignore the sniping from her grandmother.

“Rick, what do you do?” George’s father broke in; he’d obviously seen this kind of thing out of his mother-in-law before.

“Software engineering,” Rick replied quietly. Jane could see that he was already uncomfortable with the way Jane’s grandmother picked at her.

“I understand that’s a pretty good field to be in.”

“It’s not bad.”

“I’m really surprised to hear you’re married,” Mavis butted back in. “You never seemed interested in it before. I saw Howie Newton the other day. He’s still single, and he was wondering if you’d ever come back.”

“Oh, that’s a thrilling idea,” Jane replied sarcastically. “I don’t care if I ever see him again.”

“He’s got a good job,” Mavis persisted. “He’d be a good catch for a young lady.”

“Not that I’m really interested, but what’s he doing?”

“Oh, he works out at the hog farm. I’m not sure what he does out there, but it’s something to do with waste management.”

“That’s even more thrilling,” Jane replied, a little snidely. “I sure wouldn’t want to be the poor girl he comes home to every night, smelling of beer and pig shit.”

“It’s a perfectly good job.”

“It is if you’re a pig, which he is.”

“He’s a nice young man. Some day some girl is going to realize that.”

“I pity the woman who does.”

“So Jane,” her father spoke up, once again seeing a mildly nasty conversation having all the potential needed to turn into a heated and ugly confrontation. “Do you plan on looking for another restaurant job?”

“I don’t know yet. There are some possibilities, and one of them includes going back to college for a while.”

“You spent four years in college, and what did you get out of it?” Mavis snorted. “It seems to me like you ought to have been able to come up with something better.”

Actually, Jane pretty much agreed with her grandmother on that one – not quite a first, but close to it. But she wasn’t about to let her get away with it, either. “I have hopes of getting into something where I’ll be able to put at least some of my college experience to use,” she replied defensively. “There aren’t always a lot of jobs in the field, so I had to do something to hold me over.”

“If you ask me, your going to college was a total waste of time. You could have stayed home and done something useful with your life.”

“You mean, like marry Howie Newton and have a house full of brats? No thank you. That’s why I left Hartford to go to college anyway.”

Jane’s mother came back into the room, carrying an armload of soft drinks. “It’s still very surprising to think of you as being married,” she said as she passed them out. “Especially so quickly. Did you go on a honeymoon?”

“Oh, yes, we had a pretty good one.”

“Where did you go?”

“Rick’s secretary was able to come up with a really good deal for us to go to Hawaii,” Jane replied, carefully tempering her words. “She manages to come up with some of the most amazing things, so it really worked out well.”

“Hawaii seems like a very wasteful way for a young couple to use their money,” Mavis butted her way into the conversation again.

“It didn’t cost us that much,” Jane replied, thinking that while it hadn’t cost them much, it must have cost Rick a bundle, not that it mattered a great deal. “We had a very nice time.”

“It was worth it,” Rick said quietly.

“So you’re living in an apartment.” Linda asked. “Are you thinking about looking for a house?”

“Not right now,” Jane replied, glad that her mother had staved off whatever shot her grandmother apparently planned on taking. “Our apartment is fine for now. Now, when we start a family, it probably won’t work as well, but we’re not planning on it very soon.”

“It seems to me that you ought to be thinking about having children,” Mavis said. “Perhaps you’d better be ready for them.”

“There’s still plenty of time for that,” Jane replied. “I’m glad we don’t have to deal with it right away. We don’t want to have to deal with too much all at once.”

“Are you planning on staying in Boulder?”

“That’s very hard to say. We may, or we may not. The software business changes quickly, and you never know what’s going to happen. Five years from now we might have to move. Rick used to work in Silicon Valley, you know, in California, and that’s where the heart of it is. It wouldn’t surprise me if we wind up there.” Farther from Hartford, she added mentally.

“I don’t think you’d want to live in California, what with all the crazy people they seem to have there, and the earthquakes.” Mavis put in.

“It’s OK,” Rick shrugged. “Not too bad.”

“If you had any sense, you wouldn’t go to California. You’d come back here to Nebraska, where you belong. You should take your family into consideration.”

“I didn’t say we were moving to California,” Jane responded. “There’s a chance, but there’s a chance we could go elsewhere, too. On top of that, there’s a good chance we’ll be staying in Boulder, at least for the foreseeable future. But I can say there’s nothing for Rick here in Hartford. It would be really dumb for us to even think about coming back here.”

“There’s nothing wrong with here,” Mavis snorted. “It’s a good place to live.”

“There are other good places to live. Boulder is one of them. At least there are things happening there, things to do besides sit at home and watch a ball game on TV. There are restaurants, bookstores, theaters, and a lot of things. I certainly prefer living in Boulder to living here. Besides, for the time being Rick’s job is there and we don’t have any choice.”

“Well, you made your bed and I guess you have to lie in it. You’d have been better off to stay here and marry a good man like Howie, but I guess you think you know better.”

“Believe me, Rick is a lot better guy than Howie could ever dream of being. Among other things, he has a good future that doesn’t involve smelling like pig shit all the time. I’m not sorry I married Rick, Grandma. Not sorry at all.”

“Jane, we really should be going,” Rick spoke up, the most words he’d said at any one time since they’d been there.

Jane was grateful for him coming to her rescue on that one, and it was clear to her that he’d had about all he could take of Grandma Mavis. That made two of them. “You’re right, Rick. We do have a lot of miles to cover today. Mom, Dad, I’m sorry we couldn’t have stopped longer, but we really do need to be getting on our way.”

Shortly afterward they were back in the BMW, heading south out of Hartford. Not far out of town, they ran into the cow manure smell again, then the pig manure. It was several miles before they felt like they could breathe freely.

“That went better than I was expecting,” Rick said finally. “Your folks don’t seem too bad, but your grandmother really is an old sourpuss. I mean, it was pick, pick, pick, all the time.”

“Yeah, she is,” Jane agreed. “The folks are OK, and they mean well. But that is such a nowhere town, and they have such nowhere lives, that I find it really hard to take. I mean, my god, being stuck in a place like that with no future and no way out is just about my worst nightmare. And then to have Grandma Mavis pushing Howie Newton at me even though I’m already married, like it didn’t matter. I hate to say it, Rick, really I do, but I have no desire to come back to Hartford unless it’s for her funeral.”

“I noticed you sort of downplayed how well off I am. I mean, explaining that this car is a rental, and so forth.”

“Maybe it was selfish of me,” she said. “But it struck me as we were there in the living room that I didn’t want them to know that. I mean, I’m not opposed to helping out in an emergency, but I don’t want them depending on it. I guess I wanted to leave the impression that we’re, well, a little overextended. They’ll be able to understand that. I don’t think Mom or Dad would ask us, but Grandma Mavis, she’d be bugging us every minute for every dollar she could get.”

“I think I saw that,” he nodded. “That probably was a smart move.”

“I really don’t like putting them down, but damn, I don’t want to be stuck like that in a place like that.”

“That’s kind of how I feel about home too, but for different reasons. You may see some of it, but I hope you won’t.”

They drove back to the Interstate, turned onto it and continued heading east. Presently, they were getting close to Lincoln, and it was late enough to stop for the evening. They found a motel, had a mediocre dinner in a chain restaurant, then went back to the motel, where they pulled on swimsuits and splashed around in the pool for a while, then went back up to their room.

“Rick,” she said as she started to untie the top of her bikini. “Thank you.”

“Thanks for what?”

“For being you. Thank you for taking me away from the fear of having to move back there. When I was working at the Mountain Grove, I was always worried that things wouldn’t work out, and that I would have to go back to that hole and put up with that shit being shoved in my face all the time. You let me escape that. I’d like to celebrate being free of it. Would you take me into the shower so we can wash all of the smell of cow shit and pig shit off of us, and then take me to bed and make love to me until I can’t take any more? It’s the best way I can think of to celebrate.”

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