When I bring up the subject with Tom Ploszaj, he gives me a staple of Grafton’s small-talk playbook: Friendly Advice. When Ploszaj first came to the community, he says, he got Friendly Advice of his own when he started asking too many questions about how things worked and who had done what to whom. “There’s a lot of places around here where they’ll never put a shovel into the dirt,” he tells me now, his tone mild. “You don’t want to find one of those places.” When I don’t respond, he clarifies, holding my eyes with his. “If you ask too many questions, you might be in a hole in the woods and no
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