The town was small enough that I knew, at least by face and name, pretty much every man and woman -- and I noticed something different about farmers. They didn't accept the "official line" on anything, and they never tried to impress or fit in. They seemed secure in who they were, not worried about whether they were popular or not. This gave them immense strength.

For example, one day while walking to school, I noticed water spouting high into the air from a broken fire hydrant. A local grocer I knew pulled over, watched it with me and a few other kids, and then said, "I'll call the city office and tell them to come fix it."

We all kept walking to school -- crisis averted. Later in life, while traveling in a big U.S. city, I noticed a similar spouting hydrant. This time people just walked around it and kept going, as if they had never really noticed it. "No calls to city hall here," I remember thinking.