From early in youth, a special feeling came over me when I made a trip to the Hermann area in east central Missouri. My dad would drive us there from our home in the exact center of Missouri a couple times every fall to see the trees change. In Hermann proper, houses and buildings are perched just a few feet from the sidewalk, and every house has a few window boxes full of healthy pansies or chrysanthemums, as the season dictates. Residential streets are often at a seemingly 45° grade, and my dad always double-checked the parking brake on the Buick. There is often an elderly woman walking carefully down the sidewalk carrying a cake. Numerous church steeples rise along with plump oaks and walnuts. It is not unlikely to see a small grape press or fruit crusher sitting on a back porch. The feeling that came over me then was one of being somewhere markedly different, but different in a comfortable, welcoming, old-world way.