In a Small Town

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           To very many people America seems to be a country of skyscrapers, where night and day you hear the clacking of elevated and subterranean trains, the hellish roar of automobiles, and the continuous despairing screams of stockbrokers rushing through the skyscrapers waving their ever-falling shares. This is the usual long- and firmly-held belief.
           Of course all that does exist - the skyscrapers, the elevated trains, and the falling shares. But that belongs to New York and Chicago. Actually, even there brokers don't run down the sidewalks knocking over American citizens; they crowd in their stock exchanges, invisible to the public, making all kinds of shady deals in those monumental buildings.
           [...]
           America is primarily a one-and two-story country. The majority of the American population lives in small towns of three thousand, maybe five, nine, or fifteen thousand inhabitants.

Chapter Eleven: The Small Town.