“The guardian of the lake was a lonely man,
the more so because he had a wife.
He showed me her picture in a plastic shield in his wallet,
a prettyish blonde girl trying her best to live up to the
pictures in magazines, a girl of products, home permanents,
shampoos, rinses, skin conditioners.
She hated being out in what she called the Sticks,
longed for the great and gracious life in Toledo or South Bend.”
– John Steinbeck,
Travels With Charley