Residents seem to most fear the arrival of suburban sprawl. To buy groceries here, people must drive to neighboring Ayer or Leominster--and they like that just fine.

"I don't like to see too much growth because we have small country roads that can't accommodate cars," Zaitlin says. The general store, which also sells prescription drugs and camera equipment, is the only place where Harvard residents meet regularly. "I'm just working here because it's a good way to meet people and hear town gossip," Zaitlin says.

Harvard, Neb.

Like Harvard, Mass., this southcentral Nebraska town is rural, all white and uncrowded. But its poverty, crime and delinquency make it a world apart.

Of Harvard's 976 residents, 26.2 percent are under the age of 18. Crime runs high. The town has between 20 and 40 arrests a year, and a staff of three full-time police officers, "extremely high for a town of this size," according to Police Chief Mike Hagley. He says most of the arrests are for alcohol-related crimes, arrests and burglaries.

Nearly all the residents live in homes costing less than $50,000. The town is far from affluent: 14.2 percent of all residents, and 18.5 percent of children, live below the poverty line.

Here in the heart of the American Dustbowl, most of the residents work as laborers in the surrounding corn and soybean fields, in the beef-and pork-packing industries or in farm-equipment manufacturing. A group of 20 to 30 migrant farm workers, mostly undocumented Mexican immigrants, come for two months each summer to work in the corn fields, town officials say.

The median per-capita income is $9,449, well below the state average of $12,452.

The town is physically segregated--divided between lower-middleclass residents in the town center, and the Courts Addition, which houses 200 residents in a converted commissary warehouse. The warehouse was part of the Harvard Army Air Base, an Air Force station used in World War II that shut down shortly after.

The town is "fairly divided," Hagley says with a hint of sadness.

Harvard's fortunes are subject to the whim of the corn crop, which has been decimated by high wind and hail in the last two years. "There's many a farmer that has to stand out there every night and literally guard their field--pray for the hail not to come," says Brent Williamson, principal for the 4th through 12th grades at the Harvard Public Schools.

Williamson says two-thirds of each class matriculates at a two- or four-year college. None have ever considered applying to Harvard University.

"Kids in the Midwest, they're still pretty much respectful of you, unlike other places," Williamson says. The teenagers' favorite hangout is the parking lot outside the town's grocery store.

Although fights sometimes break out and some alcohol and drug abuse occurs, the biggest problem is domestic child abuse and sexual abuse. Williamson estimates he deals with five or six such cases a year. In a recent case, a father sexually abused his two junior-high-age sons, who then sexually abused a younger sister. The boys were removed from the home by the state's Child Protective Services.

The school is trying to create a better life for the students, buying 14 new computers recently and opening an Internet connection. But with a stagnant population, Harvard has gradually been losing state education aid money. Williamson predicts the school will eventually close and be consolidated with districts in the surrounding towns. "Once they lose the school, it's going to be difficult for the community to hang on," he says.