Flowers for Elwood, IN

Elwood is a glass town at heart. When the Indiana gas boom hit in the 1890s the factories came, and hand-blown art glass has been part of the place ever since — the reason the Elwood Glass Festival still fills Callaway Park every August with a parade, a carnival, and the Rod Run's three-hundred-odd classic cars. It is also Wendell Willkie's hometown; he came back here in 1940 to accept the Republican presidential nomination in front of a crowd that swallowed the whole downtown. Day to day, Elwood is a tidy central-Indiana grid: Main Street and Anderson Street cross at the center, the neighborhoods run out to the north and south sides, and a local driver can cover the residential blocks, the churches, the schools, and the funeral homes without much distance between stops. Because the town has no hospital of its own, most get-well orders ride south to Community Hospital of Anderson on North Madison, a straight shot down State Road 37 and 32.

Other Indiana cities.