HOUNDSTOOTHE 1.1: The Turning of the Wheel

Imagine a child opening a Christmas present in 1957. Inside the box, the child sees a picturesque model of a small New England town. It has all the staples of small-town America. Twinkling lights, mom-and-pop store fronts, neat little blocks with colonial houses. It's surrounded by a clay forest of pine, elm, ash, birch, and oak. On a little hill south of the lake is a white water tower, painted with the lupine grin of the Houndstoothe Fightin' Gray Wolf. Perhaps the child doesn't notice the other wolf, a figure too large to be in scale with the town, but small enough to go unnoticed for now. It sits in the woods south of the town circle, and it has little pink lightbulbs for eyes.
Sixty years pass. Many things stay the same, but lots of lights grow dim. There are a few corporate faces invading, but this is an idyllic place, so the mom-and-pop places soldier on as well as they can. But the only light that burns ever-bright and ever-constant is Lincoln's Diner.