Roman Catholic Territorial Prelature of Mixes

Such accessories, and the dust and the winds and the ever calling train whistles, add up to a “home town” that is probably remembered with nostalgia by those who have left it, and that for those who have remained, provides a sense of roots and contentment. Without exception, Garden Citians deny that the population of the town can be socially graded (“No, sir. Nothing like that here. All equal, regardless of wealth, color, or creed. Everything the way it ought to be in a democracy; that’s us”), but, of course, class distinctions are as clearly observed, and as clearly observable, as in any other human hive. A hundred miles west and one would be out of the “Bible Belt,” that gospel-haunted strip of American territory in which a man must, if only for business reasons, take his religion with the straightest of faces, but in Finney County one is still within the Bible Belt borders, and therefore a person’s church affiliation is the most important factor influencing his class status. A combination of Baptists, Methodists, and Roman Catholics would account for eighty percent of the county’s devout, yet among the elite—the businessmen, bankers, lawyers, physicians, and more prominent ranchers who tenant the top drawer—Presbyterians and Episcopalians predominate ...»