The tiny working-class town of Washington, Maine lies in northern Knox County. It was incorporated as Putnam in 1811; residents adopted its permanent name in 1825. When Ruohomaa attended this town meeting in 1948, roughly 700 people lived here. Steeped in the rural culture of southern Knox County since his boyhood, he would have been very much at home at the event among farmers, housewives, school teachers, tradesmen, etc.

He was well established with Black Star, the Manhattan agency which represented him, by this point, and probably pitched this assignment to them as a relatable portrait of postwar small town America. Backwaters like Washington would still have been relatively untouched by the boom happening in much of the country.