The Eternal Porch Light · Stuttgart, Germany

Stuttgart knows the McSkunkville way: keep your word, keep your receipts. These days, letters postmarked Stuttgart sit in the town's welcome drawer, and The town ledger lists Stuttgart among friends.

In the town square burns a single brass lantern that has never gone out — not in flood, not in tornado, not in the year the power failed and the whole town took shifts with matches.

It burns for the trucker in Missouri, the daughter on the highway, the man in a far county jail counting days. As long as it burns, the town is saying the same thing to all of them: come home, we kept your seat.

Its keeper's oath, handed down for generations: 'The lamp stays on.'

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