Sunday Afternoon Post: Really Small Town America

Smithfield, Pennsylvania, is one of those towns where if you hold your breath you can make it through by the time you need to exhale.  They do have a traffic light there, though, at the corner of Church and Morgantown. 

Its not that I am not used to small towns, I've lived in and around them most of my existence, but this particular traffic light reminded me that while this was still a full functioning town, it was also a very... small one.  There it was, standing all by itself, like a toll collector at a bridge that never gets used.  It seemed very superfluous, as if to say to the odd out-of-towner that Smithfield was something to notice while passing by, maybe even a nice community to live in, but that it would not be surprised or upset if you just kept passing on through.  That's the sort of feeling I got from that off the beaten path part of Pennsylvania in general.  Sure, Pittsburgh and even Morgantown were nearby, as were notable attractions like Fort Necessity, but this is one of those parts of North America that seemingly got skipped over for the next level of frontier.