Money magazine has published a list it calls the 100 Best Small Towns in America. My copy came in the mail this week.
Flipping through it now, let’s see, here’s No. 2 Milton, Mass., OK; and No. 6 Hanover, N.H., nice; and No. 8 Middleton, Wis., a handsome town.
The magazine’s centerfold has a big map. Each of the 100 Best Small Towns is marked with a black dot. In the Midwest and along the East Coast the dots are so dense that, taken together, they look like beard stubble. There are also clusters of top towns in the Pacific Northwest, the suburbs of Denver, northern Utah and east Texas.
Money says the No. 1 small town in America is (drumroll, please) Louisville, Colo., where a typical, single-family home sells for $368,000.
Shifting my gaze down to the bottom of the map, I’m feeling the blood gathering in my cheeks now. Money says (or at least its data indicate) that there are almost no noteworthy small towns in the South.