People complained that Libertarian wasn't even big enough to support a good scandal. Daphne and Brick running off together was a pretty good one for a while, but it didn't have much staying power in light of the fact that it was all resolved in a matter of a fortnight, and Daphne's parents were too well-respected in town to make for a good whisper campaign. That, and all Libertarians knew it wasn't cool to lose the friendship of the only undertaker in town.

With no scandal, very little commerce, and a miniscule population, the long, hot summer could be pretty insufferable. People stayed at home unless they had a specific task to perform. Not many houses were centrally air conditioned, so the buzz of window air conditioners could be heard all over town. Summers were not only hot but oppressively humid, and there was no town swimming pool or even a decent town park to offer relief. There was a park of sorts, that is if you liked to picnic on a cement slab under no trees. When an old filling station a mile or two out of town finally burned to the ground a few years ago, someone put a little round table with an umbrella and two chairs on the remaining pad, and the joke around town was that it was the picnic ground the town had always wished for. Various people would tend this little piece of land, put artificial flowers on the table all summer, removed the faded flowers in the fall, and put down the umbrella on windy days. Nobody in particular. Just whoever happened to think of it.