back when the founding fathers were signing the declaration of independence most americans lived in small towns but by the country's 100th birthday there'd been a big change america was industrializing and the city became the place in which we chose to live the city was the hub the center of activity a symbol of progress in a nation which valued that characteristic above most others as we near our second hundredth birthday americans are caught in a bind we dream of the happiness and security of the small town but we fear its remoteness we don't want to lose touch so we've created the suburbs in an attempt for the best of both worlds meanwhile the small town has been ignored as you travel from detroit to cincinnati on interstate 75 you pass over hundreds of small towns including bluffton ohio but this community is not so easy to ignore as others what follows is a look at one small town which is succeeding a community which can provide recreational activity for a wide cross-section of its residents has latched on to something good and for many years bluffton has had just the thing a fishing derby which attracts both veteran fishermen and neophytes five four three two five it was so well this is the 30th annual fishing derby we've had here this year we've got 900 pounds of trout we ordered in we got them in last thursday and uh we've got 195 tag ones in here number one trout which is worth the money big money weighs about three three and a half pounds it's a nice trout we we i hope to egg and put him in and if you catch a child it's the tag which tags in the corner and you bring it up to the table and then each one is numbered up to 195 this year and the you're given a card and the the card has on it the prize that goes with the number of the day we have six this year that are 25 hours that are given out by the people of the local community around here is only a few acres in it but today we have 41 boats which is the most we've had uh on the records i have with me is the most since 1964. not really it's on this small pawn at one time we had the moose's uh 57 boots in one year here four ounces that's bluffton four ounces nine inches give you a prize right down there so do dave bracey and i'm from bluffing the high and i've spent about five derbies today's my birthday and my brother-in-law bought my ticket for me well i caught one trout got him up here on the bank but he got back in and one perch been fishing since two o'clock i've been fishing about 10 years here this is second 25 on what i've caught i caught one about four years ago i haven't really caught too much i've had a trout today and lost him and that's about it pretty crowded here it's kind of hard to fish i don't know about eight or ten of my suppose so far enjoy every minute of it dude a natural fisherman i rather fish than eat i've been here about 15 years now i live in bradner though that's about 40 miles away i do most of my fishing in lake erie but i fish every weekend on tuesdays not on thursdays i'm going to fish here tomorrow i love to fish in american tradition going fishing has always meant playing hooky from school but bluffton's interest in fishing has carried over into the field of education a number of elementary students in the public school system have had the chance to make fishing class a part of their curriculum right i'll shoot for that little limb out there oh you're a little bit to the left there we are no moving there we are okay oh it's still twisted more caster is it still twisted can't be did it i didn't think it was okay i just can't see oh you got a real job there too didn't you okay now uh this thing goes i gotta watch it but the main thing which was impressed in the instruction in the classroom was courtesy courtesy the other angle tell the angler do not cast indiscriminately know what you're aiming for learn near real and if you have permission to go on a man's property to fish respect his rights and do not do anything that he doesn't want you to do do not litter and always act a gentleman this took about two hours to explain all these niceties but it is part of the angling the basic history of it was called a co-curricular activity which gave students an opportunity to choose the month of may several alternatives of course selection other than what they usually take one of those selections were fishing and one friday afternoon each week for the month of may we released them from classroom from the classroom instruction and they were able to go out and participate in a co-curricular activity and this is a as a movement in the middle school movement is to to give students other alternatives rather than just reading writing arithmetic wait a minute wait that doesn't do you a bit of good that doesn't do you very good where are you at well you're not kidding you're wrapped around i don't know why we can do you any good but the only thing you can do is go and crawl out that limb i don't think i try that looks kind of flimsy okay i see you keep it always tight keep it always tight bring the lower right up to the branch and then jerk it see your floor comes right back here see okay reel it in if you uh play with it it'll wind itself around the branch and won't come off now when you out there with that type of a lure uh that type of lure you want to give it some action see about a turn about two turns and jerk it and that gives the lure some action leave it rest see leave it right just a little bit and give it some action see it down there shake it i don't know it's up and down huh can't you see it yeah i see it i'm just saying it it will move it isn't uh it's been wrong the interest in education outside the classroom continues through the college years the bluffton slaw cutter company is managed by students from nearby bluffton college and it's been a profitable experience in more ways than one for many years now the bluffton style cutter company began here in bluffton almost 60 years ago it was really in response to the ladies of the community they wanted a sharp fruit and vegetable slicer one that would cut uh i imagine their sauerkraut even in those days so mr fett who was operating a hardware store of town decided that they could make such a cutter they got some steel and began hammering out these cutters by hand in the back of the hardware store in a few years time this business had grown because the people were demanding the cutter due to the fact that it was always sharp and would wear sharp then they decided in 1925 to move to this plant from the back store of the hardware of town at that time mr fett's sons came into the business out of mr kimmel these men then operated the plant and built up the equipment it's interesting that they built some of their own equipment to do the particular operations that were necessary because the knife in this cutter is hammer tempered and therefore it will remain sharp in fact it will wear sharp so that we get letters telling of them being sharp for 40 or 50 years you see it's made out of steel we start with a much larger piece cut the steel into this size printing our name on it then the steel is crimped the handle is bent and slid in and crimped into place finally the knives are slotted in and then the grater the students in the business department of bluffton college have always been interested in the various community businesses we made some field trips uh to the various plants and this one was especially intriguing because it was of the size that we could understand and we could appreciate it was all contained neatly or in one little building at that time the students got to talking with mr fett about the operation and finding out that he was interested in retiring uh they continued talking they said wouldn't it be interesting if we could operate a plant the teachers in the college that is the student teachers they go out and they do practice teaching the social workers they have their field work the science people have their laboratories in which they experiment and the music people certainly do their experimenting with their practice but here we in business we do not have anything like that so the more we kept talking about it the more interested we became we decided to organize a corporation now this is a corporation for profit the stockholders are local community people some students have purchased stock they elected the senior board they made an offer to mr fett to buy the plant and gradually the conditions were worked out so that as the corporation was founded in 1961 the plant was available for sale and purchase was completed the students from the college in the business department are involved in the plant but not in production we do hire students to do the packaging but the students are really involved as a learning experience this is a regular credit course and when they come into the course they select the area of their main interest they also elect a junior board the junior board is made up of the general manager who has been elected by the students and uh three other elected members they then assign each student to the particular role that he wishes to be engaged in as nearly as possible according to their wishes so we have some students who are engaged in accounting the regular financial accounting preparing the all of the statements closing the books each month we have other students who are engaged in inventory control we haven't taken inventory each month we also have students involved in cost accounting the advertising people for example they will prepare a rack tag like this with the copy the particular drawings they want and also the basic information on the back side they prepare a catalog page we have students who answer the direct mail we get many letters from all over the country united states canada and even foreign countries asking about the cutter and one person is in charge of preparing the letter writing to these people to encourage them to buy the the cutter as every corporation we prepare an annual statement in this annual statement we report all the activities of the year how we paid so many dollars in taxes we had uh so much in employment costs uh we ended up with uh so much net profit the students prepare the annual report they will prepare the financial statements the charts and the graphs all the kinds of information you usually find in an annual report of a corporation these reports then are given at an annual meeting the stockholders are invited to this if and we send out just like any corporation the proxy statements and all the rest uh the students work with all of these materials so that they become familiar with the operation of a corporation at the annual meeting the students then give an oral report in addition to the printed report which is placed in the hands of the people who attend so the students get a rounded approach to the operation of a corporation in the production of a commodity that competes in the market with all of the other corporations producing a similar commodity it's a real experience in the real business world bluffton is situated in an ideal geographical location midway between two pairs of industrial centers detroit in cincinnati and pittsburgh in chicago that might be a partial explanation for the number of businesses in the town today over 200 and industry is still moving into bluffton one of the major contributors to the bluffton economy however is a home-grown company the triplet corporation in a town as small as this the relationship between industry and the community is critical and triplet is aware of its obligations the story of triplet is an important part of the story of bluffton i had been out of high school i went to chicago and got in with the jewel electrical instrument company there making making making these high class sensitive instruments but they had limited demand of course and uh when they got into a little patent situation i came back to bluffton hometown while here i just started designing this meter here automobile trade was just getting underway and it was had an instant market there you might see in the automobile field a first meter made with a hot wire meter i don't have a sample of that here though that was used in uh for testing batteries and for any any kind of purge the hot wire meter could be used any place ac dc or automotive or electronic or any other of course we didn't have much electronic in those days but we did have wireless and it could be used on that well anyway we then started a measuring meter which we call the read write meter for uh testing automobile batteries automobiles we're using batteries largely for ignition purposes and dry batteries would go bad and they'd want to know what was wrong and which was right and use the meter to find out you know when radio came in the early 20s we couldn't make enough meters to satisfy the demand they were but here's them by the thousands at that time and we worked up to one instrument alone this one right here this shadow type mirror but we made 5 000 of those a day for one customer and they couldn't get enough of them then when the war came on because the material was had to be diverted to warmer purposes and more production and the meters had to take its course we're getting into fields today that require instruments much much more delicate and much more precision and in some cases much more reliable than instruments of the past for example in the hospital area we're now measuring very very small body currents and here human life can depend on the not only the accuracy of the instrument but the reliability so it is necessary to can have very strenuous quality control over instruments that are used in this type of application we're finding too that instruments now are being used more in the electronic era where a very delicate currents must be measured and here we find that we need new techniques in the manufacture of the instrument uh for example today instead of writing on bearings which have friction we suspend the instruments on wires such as a torsion bar would be in your automobile today we see ourselves on the threshold of a what i call a second generation of the transistor the development of the micro circuit here the electronic developments of the future are going to be things which make our society a moneyless society for example where instead of exchanging money over the counter for our purchase we will be exchanging electronic signals it will make possible the buck rogers wristwatch personal communication devices of all types and already we're seeing the micro circuits making a revolution in our method of telling time all of these developments will require instrumentation they will require different types of instrumentation instruments that will look and be different tomorrow than they are today but here in this business change is really a way of life another familiar sight in bluffton is dorothy anderson whose pleasure is flying donnie has logged over 20 000 hours in the air and as is so often the case with people who do what they love she teaches her skills to others but i've always enjoyed uh airplanes ever since i was oh maybe six years old something like that and at that point i decided that i'd like to be a pilot and learn how to fly and of course my parents thought there must be something wrong with me but it sort of stuck through me with me through all the years so when i was about 15 my i with a lot of other kids joined the civil air patrol unit and that gave me transportation back and forth to the airport in findlay and i promptly started taking flying lessons and i did learn to fly at findlay airport in i finished up my commercial and my instructor after i started back at working at the bluffton airport after i'd finished colley i've been an instructor for let's see it'll be 26 years now i guess i've been instructing and uh most of my flying time that i've accumulated has been of course teaching people to fly and we do use flaps a little more on this than what we do on a record 140. let's make a 90 to the left roll right into it medium bang little elevator pressure to keep your nose up on your right very good all right let's make another 90 to the left and we'll get ourselves a position to re-enter traffic and you can give them a call this is four zero nine six six so it's still a cherokee cherokee four zero nine six airport advisory we do carry quite a number of students for a small airport i think we average between 50 and 55 in various courses private commercial instrument flight instructor the greatest bulker in the primary where they're learning to to fly to get a private pilot certificate which will enable them to take someone with them just like a driver's license does and of course a lot of student training is supervised where you fly with a student maybe today and then he'll fly solo for two or three times on this primary stage before you pick him up for more duel so you say that you have 50 to 55 students like some of them are on supervised training while you're flying other ones so average about seven or eight students a day under normal conditions now you can reduce your power a little more and that'll let your nose stay down on the horizon there just a little bit more more or less aimed at your spot on your runway there which is your where your taxiway comes out if your nose drops below that spot just add a little par on the other hand if it goes above the spot reduce your power a little bit oh you're looking good level her off just like before only this one's a little heavier on the nose oh you got to get a little more back pressure like that see it'll fly a little like got a lot more wing on this one there you go flapper well i've enjoyed flying with students all these years and i hope to be able to do it for a long time in the future i think our airport facilities offer us an opportunity to develop our student training program and all the rest of the phases of general aviation here in bluffton the tradition of work continues into retirement bluffton senior citizen center is a model throughout the state providing both work and social opportunities for its participants of course not everyone stays in bluffton among the hometown folks who've made good are television host hugh downes former cleveland mayor ralph loker and comedian phyllis diller some have chosen to remain and have established national reputations while living and working in bluffton such a man is richard mink an artist of many unique talents why i am still in bluffton is that my mother's parents are from this area i uh come here by way of um iowa where i was born in pennsylvania new york california and finally ohio uh it's much more economical for me to be here as far as that part goes i can maintain a studio here and uh rates are much cheaper than they are in the east and it's uh what should i say in the center of the country where i can take things uh to the east as i do to my gallery outlets there and i can take things to the west and uh in different areas but basically economically it's it's a much more desirable situation a small town no one to bother you uh many people who are quite sympathetic many art people are in this area and uh it's it's quite desirable you feed on that type of stimulus and it's very good in in many areas well right now i'm probably uh basically involved in jewelry the metal work and although i i get what i'm really basically a ceramicist or a sculptor and uh i've done majority of my work in that area in the last few years i've stemmed off in in into jewelry and i do this simply because i i need to grow with the things that i do and as i go from one area to another one media to another i feed from this and i just need that a little bit of stimulus that each offers right now the jewelry seems to be doing the best and consequently i stay in that area and that i can do more commission type things and i like it it's a lot of fun to do this kind of thing i have done some paintings i don't do a lot in this area that's flat flat two-dimensional kind of thing and i really prefer the three-dimensional things as the clay and the metal represent but i still like to get into that area also i don't know casting never appealed to me quite as much you make a model and you pour hot metal into the model after you have it after you have your mold made and this kind of thing leaves me a little cold it's like duplicating ceramic pieces in a mold that you buy commercially and this to me is not a very satisfying experience it's much more desirable for me to actually get in with my hands and work and maneuver and and actually push and form in that particular way much more exciting the ceramic part of it as far as doing a pot this is um just a matter of putting clay on the wheel once you have clay that is receptive to this type of work making it an actually a baseball shape or a round shape putting it on the wheel head and starting up your basic move here is to get the clay centered it must be symmetrical before you can actually maneuver and start up and making a what we call our basic cylinder from the basic cylinder once this is established you can go in just about any direction whether you want to make a bowl or you want to make a bottle shape or whatever you happen to want to make you start squeezing together very gently and just lift and the clay has to respond it must go somewhere so the clay will of course go up and you do this what we call pulling you do this maybe three or four times maybe five times and establish a thin walled cylinder the actual the walls of the cylinder when this is accomplished should not be more than uh 3 8 of an inch thick and then from that particular point you can establish it as a bottle a bulbous bottle shape or into a tall bottle with a very linear long type spout or top to it or you can bring the pot out if there's enough clay left you can and you allow for this kind of thing you you have some direction before you really get involved in this and you establish whether you're going to make a bowl shape you must allow enough clay in the cylinder wall itself in order to have enough clay left to bring it out into a bowl shape so you just maneuver that just by pulling the clay it's very receptive very plastic and extremely easy to work with you dry the pot and this takes maybe four or five days to a week just depending on what the drying circumstances are you introduce it into a kill and this is a really like an oven it heats up to a certain temperature and they can be electrical or they can be gas oil coal wood whatever you happen to have whatever material you happen to have to work with if you have no set up for gas or electricity you can use wood actually the direction that i'm going right now is in the three dimensional jewelry area and i think i'm always open i always like to think of myself being very open i make trips to various parts of the country all the time and i'm always involved in in that kind of things getting new stimulus new ideas and if i see another direction that i think is a little bit better uh maybe it'll be into three-dimensional sculptural kind of things or back into the ceramic area a little bit heavier it just depends i don't know it's it's an interesting question and one that i i like to think that i'm flexible enough to allow for anything anything that new is new on the horizon i'm very receptive to and very glad to change and go into a new area another bluffton resident is interested in transportation dr boyd travis is a railroad man but you're not likely to find him out here watching the passing freight trains because in the great empire builder traditions of leland stanford and commodore vanderbilt dr travis has built a rail empire the likes of which you've probably never seen before been working on the railroad just to pass the time away don't you hear the whistle blowing rise up so early in the morning i've been working on the railroads just to pass the time away don't you hear the whistle blowing rise up so early in the morning won't you blow your heart your horn this layout was started about 30 years ago and has been gradually built up over a period of years adding more trains and more cars more locomotives as we go along and i actually at this time have a rather large layout it's in a room especially built for this it happens to be about 65 feet long and averages from 15 to 20 feet wide everything is controlled from one master control panel the trains are operated by direct current we're using two power supplies with a polarized the positive pole in one direction and the negative hole in the other direction each set of tracks are controlled by separate rheostats which control the amount of voltage or power supply for each train they can be started and stopped from any distance we have to keep our eyes and ears open when we're running the trains at all times to make sure that one doesn't run astray or as sometimes happens two of them get on the same track when i'm not watching properly and we have what's called a collision and the real thing as well as here actually even a long train appears to be using a lot of electricity but actually my longest train uses less current than a 25 watt bulb in the ceiling my electrical bill is consists mostly of the lights overhead to control the in order to see what's going on not the trains themselves this happens to be a cno allegheny type train it's articulated the front wheels and coming to a curve have to move over before the rest of it does the boiler is so long that it can't get around on all curve this is the way the real ones are built too and of course the models we try to build a scale to act exactly like that most people visiting like to see how fast the train will run but i'm more concerned with how slowly it will pull a load as the train goes on by you'll see that it has quite a long load this is a coal train all the way through there are actually 38 cars of coal of course people always wonder what kind of coal you use for that it happens that if you try to crush real coal to small scale sizes it just won't work so we have to use stone and paint it to disguise it a model railroad is never complete until it has a turntable and a round house and of course that was one of the first things we got here the turntable is used to take engines out of the roundhouse where they have been repaired and then they can be swung around to another track where they can then be ready to leave and take a train out to its destination and while we're waiting here here comes a model of the milwaukee roads hiawatha which was one of the first streamlined steam locomotives in order to compete with the diesels when they first began to come out it costs the railroad six hundred six thousand dollars per engine to convert it and cover it like this just to compete with diesels it didn't help the train in any way at all except for looks but milwaukee road converted a number of steam engines with a shroud like that it's taken about 30 years for me to build this layout i think in another 30 years i might have it finished if i'm not too old americans have been and continue to be intrigued by travel which may explain our national obsession with the automobile each year bluffton pays tribute to the auto by hosting an antique car festival now henry jones and a pretty little queen took a ride one day in his big limousine the car kicked up and the engine wouldn't crank there wasn't any gas in the gasoline tank just about that time along came lord and he rambled right along in his little old ford he stole that plane as his engine sang a song and his little old paws just rambled right along his little old ford rambled right along and the little old ford rambled right along the gas ran out in the big machine but the darned little ford don't need gasoline the big limousine had to back downhill but the blame little sword is going up still when it runs out of dope just fill it up with soap and the little board will ramble right along they ran over glass and they ran over nails they ran over pigs and puppy dog tails they bothered the cop and shot out the sight they rambled all day till almost night they smashed up fences and telegraph holes ran into ditches and deep shut holes they bumped into a printer and the preacher took a ride then the ford rambled on with johnny and his bride the little old ford rambled right along and the little old ford rambled right along he swung around the corner and he ran into a mule and the darned old donkey kicked like a fool he prayed and he barked and he kicked the wheels but he had to quit ticking to save his heels when she blows out a tire just wrap it up with wire and the little ford will ramble right along you can smash the top and smash up the seat twist it out of shape till full sends me smash the body and rip out a gear smash up the front and smash up the rear bend up the fender and rip off the tires break up the lamps and cut out the wires throw in the clutch to the dickens with the juice and the little old balls will go to beat the juice the little old fours it rambled right along and the little old ford it rambled right along now cut that out you naughty tease tis a left hand drive and a right hand squeeze patch it up with a piece of string chewing gum or any old thing when the power gets sick just hit it with a brick and the little fort will ramble right along hello i'm leslie henry curator of the transportation collections in the henry ford museum at dearborn michigan this is my first visit with an anti-governor bill to bluffton for the great annual uh anti-government parade here in in the town this is a marvelous collection of cars it encompasses the cars not only from the very beginning in the early 1900s but all the way up to the contemporary historic vehicles in fact this parade is sponsored really by two clubs the contemporary historic vehicle club and the pioneer automobile club of northern ohio we have cars from 16 states and canada registered this year we're up to about 350 cars the meet is an enjoyable event it's enjoyable in the aspect that people can leave their cars go talk to people from other areas of the country go uptown no fear of it usually never rains until this year we used to have a slogan it never rains for bluffton it was washed off the back of one of the cars this year yes we're very pleased with the response we're having this year again this is our seventh production of this kind in the bluffton area sponsored by bluffton businessmen and we're having a very fine turnout today in fact we're right down here looking at cars and kind of looking for places to put them right now well we judge cars my my group is up through 1927. and we judge most cars regardless of make and one in one group to compete for a grand prize trophy in that category although there are specific classes that we also judge through this judging form here we drew wrote up a year or so ago and it has six basic categories in it one category is paint and exterior finish and there's one top glass and exterior bright work we judge the interior separately the engine compartment then the chassis and the undercarriage and then of course authenticity which is correct engine and so forth well this is one of my first loves i've always wanted a 41 ever since i was 17 years old and i've been driving chevrolet about 30 years so this i finally got it what i wanted well it's a 41 commander 6-cylinder studebaker it has an overdrive transmission and it will get 20 to 25 miles per gallon on a road depends on the type of driving you do with their shields and this sort of thing uh it's the largest buick that they made that year it's a 1941 buick limited series it's the seven passenger limousine and it's all original it has the uh you know the seven passenger jump seats and has a shortwave 5-band radio dual carburetors it's quite an impressive car well this is the first car that we started out with and i don't know i think we did this in about the early 50s well it's a 29 packard straight eight dual colfayette and bonnie so there's only a few of them in the united states with this type body there's quite a few dual color photons but very few of them with a dietrich body uh we call it ford calls this a deluxe delivery and uh we wanted something printed on the side we didn't know what else to use so we just used the name of the truck and put our last name on the top and we call it roots deluxe delivery no you don't get strange looks you just get a lot of nice smiles and waving what a community is today is in large part due to its yesterdays the swiss homestead outside of bluffton is a durable reminder of its past the history of bluffton is not the stuff of which pioneer movies are made in the immediate vicinity there were no famous battles no run-ins with indians and although ohio has produced many presidents bluffton doesn't get credit for even one nonetheless bluffton story is an interesting one the development of this community has been a process of slow growth marked by some shrewd leadership fortuitous geography and occasional good luck and timing almost uninterrupted prosperity can be traced to two undramatic human traits hard work and thrift these two characteristics were shared by both the irish and swiss mennonite settlers who formed the community in the late 1830s joseph de ford plotted the town in 1839 at the intersection of an indian trail and riley creek and he called it shannon the next year daniel neinschwander constructed a meeting house of the swiss mennonite church and by 1850 there were 12 families living in the community the u.s post office requested that the town change its name apparently because another older ohio community was called shannon and so in 1861 its name was changed to bluffton most important decision in the early history of the town was the financing of a twenty thousand dollar referendum to attract the lake erie and louisville railroad this is the citizens knew a good investment when they saw one railroad helped attract industry in the 11 years between the first railroad line and the second in 1883 there's evidence of 22 industries operating in the town at the same time the population mushroomed from the 12 families of 1850 to 1250 residents 30 years later the business district of the community got its start in 1873 when the first block of commercial buildings was built on main street and the second was finished within five years the term gay nineties applies well to bluffton during the last decade of this century these were the years of the oil boom and with the wells came an unexpected almost fantastic wave of prosperity it changed the small community's way of living and more important it lay the foundation for the thriving industrial community of the 20th century highlighting the golden age of bluffton's industrial history which followed on the heels of the oil boom was the town's emergent as the cream separator manufacturing capital of the world tracing the kinds of products which the town has manufactured corresponds with the evolution of american technology because in addition to the cream separator production the city of bluffton has been engaged in the production of wood products fireless cookers coleslaw cutters washing machines gasoline motors camera plate holders for 36 pictures radio condensers and finally precision electronic instruments bluffton was chosen in 1899 as the site of central mennonite college which in 1914 was reorganized as bluffton college a four-year liberal arts institution in early 1908 bluffton opened its first hospital capably staffed by a trained nurse and an assistant since the days of the oil boom the city of bluffton has continued to grow and prosper even during the worst days of the depression bluffton continued to move forward thanks largely to the hard work and determination of his residence we've been told for generations that the small town is dying and that frequently seems to be the case not so with bluffton this town is alive and well thanks to the four-sidedness of its leaders and of course money is an important factor in keeping a town alive and the residents of bluffton have been willing to invest in their future over two million dollars of their own money has been spent in the last five years at revitalizing the downtown district some of the residents of bluffton have taken over the operation of the local theater to ensure that bluffton will never be without one new airport and modern airport facility have been opened and the new industrial park is being planned for the community the statistics about today's bluffton are revealing three thousand residents forty percent of whom are retired of the seven hundred homes in the community eighty-two percent are lived in by their owners of the people who work almost 75 percent work in bluffton and the average yearly income per person is nearly nine thousand dollars what all this indicates is that a small town can continue to thrive in the era of the them megalopolis the good old days knee pants and diamond dance girls oh lord them was the good old days there was some good old days with modern days and radios it was good old days them was a good old days there was a days when the cat was a cat's meow if they had a separate culture sit down you're rocking the boat yeah there was a good old dance with marvel days days it's been more than 30 years since thornton wilder wrote his analysis of small town america in the play our town it's heroine emily understands too late to appreciate the life she had the lesson she learns is one that's been neglected by many small towns in this country but it appears as though the people of bluffton are aware of the peculiar values of their small town and they're working to preserve it for the future you