Most people called his area suburbs, but he generally prefered to tell anyone who asked that he lived "15 minutes south of DC" or "a little out of the city" - it made it sound much more interesting and involved than "the suburbs". Of course, it was only 15 minutes when traffic was moving, which was only between the hours of 10pm and 4am - any other time you rarely averaged more than 25 on beltway, a little faster on 66.

The traffic around Arlington and Fairfax wasn't the same kind of violent and agravating as was the traffic in the heart of DC: there was rarely ever the same sort of deadlock here, you never got to take your foot off the clutch, but it was certainly a "me first" culture - as if everyone on the road was more important than everyone else.

This was a bit of a self perpetuating problem, and Miles had decided it must have evolved from a single driver. Someone, somewhere, had decided that they had to be some place, and had to be there ten minutes ago. That driver would do whatever she had to do to get to her decided destination, "running" yellow lights, cutting off other drivers to cross three lanes at a time: in other words, the way everyone seems to drive now.

Driving across the whole of Frowntown never takes more than 5 minutes, even during what the locals call rush hour. You can pass by the high school which marks the southern edge of the town and, just a couple minutes later, be parked in the car dealership on the northernmost limit. Miles truly understands what a small town is now. Frowntown is home to about eight thousand permanent residents, though the size nearly doubles once school starts in the fall - and most of those 8,000 live on the outskirts of the town, in tract houses put up within the last 40 years. There are still a few 100 year old buildings, and one or two that date to before the declaration of independance, but they are mostly historical societies and don't house anyone. With so few people living along the main road, traffic just never has a chance to pile up like it did in Fairfax.

Miles had certainly solved the traffic problem by following his fiancee to Frowntown, but had created a couple problems at the same time. Because there were so few people in Frowntown, there wasn't much business, and so, not much work. Miles had worked as a "stereo technician" in Virginia, installing high-end stereos in cars and houses. He knew how to install enough speakers, amps, capacitors, crossovers and junction boxes in a truck to blow out the windows if you didn't put them down. He could wire house alarms with the kind of lasers you see in movies. Miles had started working for Audio Buys in Fairfax as soon as he graduated high school, and had moved around every couple years to wherever the pay was best, he even spent a year installing custom mobile audio in Ferraris.

There wasn't much of a market for $3,000 stereos in Frowntown though, so he has had to pick up whatever jobs he could find. Miles worked at Sheetz, Wal-Mart, and was currently detailing loaners and test drives at the Ford dealership on the edge of town. None of this work was any fun, not like the stereo work he used to do. One of the things that Miles loved best was the way he could take 10 or 15 different products, from 4 or 5 vendors, wire them all together, click them on, and have them work. That first low hum when the "silent" fans spun up for the first time on a new system was always the best - sure, someone else built the amps and speakers, but he made them work: so few people could do that well the first time around.

Miles still got stereo work now and then, but it was usually college kids, and mostly what they wanted was the ability to get everyone's attention when they drove through town. Throwing a $200 Sony X-Plode amp and a set of 12" woofers in the trunk of a ricer civic doesn't make a stereo any more than the spoiler on the back makes it stick to the road. Most of these college kids wouldn't know the difference between a serious stereo installation and a headunit connected to a sub unless you were somehow able to sober them up for a couple hours.

Now that this lack of interesting work is really starting to get to Miles, he's questioning his desire to live in Frowntown - he often thinks back to a scene he remembers from Virginia and compares it to another in Frowntown: a car accident had left a driver incapacitated, and the two towns handled it very differently:

Miles had been driving out to a friend's farm to do some truck sledding - essentially this involves connecting a sled (or old tire) to the hitch of a four wheel drive truck and, trailing 15 or 20 feet behind, racing through snowy fields as fast as possible. The sled rider gets covered in snow, bombarded with truck exhaust, and eventually falls off. Injury is usually unlikely, though it's possible to hit a medium sized rock that the truck just cleared, and which was hidden under the snow. Generally the sheer speed of the sled will carry you over most obstacles, including the ubiquitous 8" wide groundhog hole known to trap (or mangle) smaller-tire vehicles and break the legs of panicky horses. Though truck sledding was a little dangerous, it was just stupid enough, and probably the most fun you could have in the snow without paying for a lift ticket.

Miles was headed out of town towards this farm after working at Sheetz all day, and the sun was just starting to think about going to bed. A school bus bringing kids home from their daily dose of indoctrination stopped to discharge a pair of siblings, its octagonal stop sign protruding from the left-hand side. Miles stopped his pickup, and the work truck behind him stopped, but the VW Gulf third in line didn't manage to find the brakes in time. Miles had previously thought that you couldn't possibly manage to cram one of those engines into a smaller compartment, but between the 45 mph the elderly driver was doing and the stout rear bumper of the 8k pound work truck, the engine was now crammed into a space a foot and a half smaller than oringinally intended. The car was totaled. A 3000 pound econobox, even if it was made in Germany, is no match for the diamond plate steel rear bumper (with mounted vise) of an 8000 pound welder's truck.

The elderly driver was not totaled, however, thanks in large part to the driver's side airbag and his three-point seatbelt. The former left him with a few facial abrasions, while the latter would leave black and blue signatures across his left shoulder and hip. The driver of the worktruck ran at once back to the injured man, as did everyone else who had seen the accident, including the bus driver. It would be 30 minutes for a fire truck, with police right after that, and a full 45 minutes for an ambulance, but by that time, the passers-by, many trained as first responders, had done just about everything but put him on a stretcher and take him to the hospital themselves.

The accident in Virginia that Miles compares to the more recent Frowntown accident wasn't too much different: a vehicle stopped, someone a few cars back wasn't paying close enough attention, and bumpers collided. The difference was in how the bystanders handled the situation: Virginia locals were interested in the crash only briefly, turning their heads fast enough to get worse whiplash than the driver who actually caused the accident. The firetruck was there right away - it only had a block to travel - full of men whose job requires them to solve these sad problems, but the people in the coffee shop just sat and watched, safe behind the metal railing of the patio, seperated from the tragedy by a lane of stopped traffic and a 3 foot sidewalk.

The errant drivers in both cases were only marginally harmed, but the real difference was in the population: the Frowntown citizens all stopped to help - not a single car went by without asking if there was something they could do - but the DC area drivers didn't even roll down their windows. A few of them actually honked at the firetruck as it blocked their lane, protesting that anyone else should get more personal attention than themselves. Northern Virginia, and indeed much of the area around DC, is rife with a sickening individuality: a competitive spirit infuses every action and drives people apart. Miles, before he moved to Frowntown, had found this sickness growing within himself and was happy at the chance to get out of the area.

The price of community in Frowntown is steep, however, and not everyone is invited to join. Miles, unlike his fiancee, was not born in Frowntown. She knew just about everyone in town, and had known them all her life. She went to elementary school with what sometimes seemed like half the population. Miles' boss at Sheetz had been her baby sitter when she was little (in fact, he was convinced this was the only reason he got the job). Everyone in Frowntown had a very public personal history, and they shared it with the rest of the residents. Miles, since he was not raised here, had never gone ice skating on the same ponds when he was a child, had never been to a keg party in the mountains when he was 18, and had never been deer hunting on North Mountain with his father. Miles was an outsider in Frowntown, and was likely to remain that way forever. First generation imigrants are rarely accepted in small communities, and Frowntown was certainly no exception.

Miles didn't want to move back to Virginia, but he felt his time in Frowntown was being wasted. He could have a much better life somewhere where there were more opportunities, somewhere that had a use for higher technology, hell, somewhere where people would know the difference between RCA cables and speaker wire. The problem was that his fiancee really enjoyed being back in her home town. She was working on the final year of her master's at Frowntown University, and had mentioned continuing her doctorate work here as well. Miles had hinted many times that she might want to think about a nicer school, an area with more research opportunities, maybe somewhere in California. He just couldn't bring himself to say that he hated Frowntown, that there was just something about the place that ate him up, that made him feel like if he stayed here, he would just continue to spin his wheels forever: working hectic hours at lame duck jobs just to make enough money to keep her in school and pay the rent.

Miles hadn't made the decision yet, but he would in the coming weeks: either they left together, or he would leave on his own. Either way, Miles had to get out of Frowntown.