Freeburg is a village of short blocks and long sidewalks, where a lawn gets measured against the neighbor's on either side. East street lawns keeps those blocks tidy — mowing, trimming around mailbox posts and fence corners, edging the strip between walk and curb until it reads like a drawn line. Saturday afternoons the mowers run past the grain elevator and the corner stops, and the smell of cut grass follows the truck down the street. Small yards reward attention; nothing hides on a quarter acre. When the leaves let go in November, they get cleared the same way, block by block, until the street looks swept.