Ezra lived with his mother and father south of Ames on a property as old as any in the area; he had to drive over half a mile of gravel road to get to the highway in a car that was barely up to the task. His father had offered to help him out with a down payment on something sturdier, but Ezra, though only nineteen, felt a deep aversion to debt, and a deeper one to casting any tool aside that had any use left in it. Farm kids are like this, I’ve found. They don’t like throwing useful things away.
-- Jeremy (Part 1, Chapter 3 paragraph 20)

Importance: There is a sense of strong regional understanding in this quote, revealing both Ezra and the narrator. On a farm, you do not throw a good thing away. This is a piece of wisdom and an ethos that is carried through and lived by by these...