Berkeley Springs, W. Va. —- On a Saturday afternoon in this small town, the tribal differences between us are on vivid display.

On the town green is an antique car show, complete with prizes. The cars are immaculate, restored by their owners with painstaking work and pride. On the other side of the main drag - Route 522 - is a small farmer’s market, bustling with locals and tourists.

And over on Fairfax St. is the Fairfax Coffee House, with its Pride flag, Black Lives Matter sign, and an invite to check your privilege. They make the best veggie pesto sandwich ever. The line is long. The license plates are from everywhere.

This town proved a good place to think about where we are as a society.

George Washington came here as a teenager to survey the town for Lord Fairfax, a major slaveholder who paid for his holdings in England with brutality in America. Washington brought his family here several times for the mineral springs, which runs 74 degrees year-round.

The legislature set aside four acres in the center of town - called the Grove - for a “suffering humanity.’’ To this day, you can cool off in the mineral water, get a massage and mineral bath at the spa and swim in the public pool encased in ancient stone. There is a replica of the stone bathtub where Washington bathed.

The town lies in the eastern panhandle of West Va., which is NOT what we know as the American south. During the Civil War, West Virginia came into existence when the mountain people of western Virginia grew sick and tired of being lectured to by the big city folk in Richmond.

So they seceded from Virginia and declared allegiance to the United States, rejecting their confederate neighbors. Looking at a map, Berkeley Springs is on a similar latitude as Baltimore. Geographically it is more Maryland and Pennsylvania than Tennessee or Georgia.

Walking Main Street and sampling the town, we ran into a gay couple from Washington D.C. who have a weekend place here. There was a drag show a few weeks ago, they reported, and a listserve of 200 LGBTQ area residents. One of them runs security for a federal agency. They couldn’t be happier, they said.

The Beehive is a plant-based cafe with smoothies. The local craft brewery is behind the library. The federal government has funded a street renovation complete with a specialized filtration system and porous bricks that clean the runoff before it flows into the Potomac. The CBD shop complains that the conservative legislature is too slow in legalizing marijuana.

Nearby is the C&O Canal Towpath, the walking path from Cumberland, MD. to D.C. It parallels the Potomac and has a magical history. They built the canal to haul coal, food, and other essentials. The railroad quickly made it obsolete. But you can imagine a society of local residents setting up shop along the canal to sell veggies and other goods to the canal boat workers.

In short, this town is wonderful. A colorful mix of locals of all kinds mixed with tourists from everywhere. There was the family on their way back to Pittsburgh from a week in North Carolina. There was the single woman fed up with the crowds of D.C. who had just moved here. Lots of people come for day trips to soak in the mineral water. And the Country Inn - where George Washington stayed - hangs on to its majesty with rocking chairs on the front porch. And you can plug in your electric car to one of three chargers outback.

The future is coming here - slowly, but inevitably. The Great Cacapon State Park, built by the Civilian Conservation Corps during the Depression, is finishing a new main lodge that cost millions. People are everywhere, picnicking, shooting hoops, playing golf, barbecuing. They don’t seem to be dealing yet with the mascot of the local high school - the Youngbloods. Nor is there much talk about the sign outside the high school - “Welcome to Indian Country.’’

And back at the antique car show, the difference between what is coming and what was is stark.

One guy with a pristine 1926 Ford with a mannequin Native American on the bench seat makes a snide racist remark. For a liberal northerner, there is always a slight sense of violence in the air. The sideways looks at your Vermont license plate. The fuck you glare from the women in the yellow monster truck peeling out after idling exhaust in our car window.

There is that familiar feeling among people who are increasingly working at jobs to service the people who come from out of town - a slight resentment mixed with pride that the town is reviving.

It’s complicated. An American society beset with political divisions coming to grips with a changing economy that is throwing everything up in the air. The winners will be the blueberry farmer who quit his office job to work his three acres with his family by innovating. Or the plumber and the mechanic who serve the growing population of weekenders escaping the city - the mechanic figuring out how to service a Prius in addition to Fords.

There will also be losers, who can’t retrain or adapt - or refuse to. The clock is ticking at the U.S. Silica plant down the road, where robots will soon take over the mining of sand.

Here in Berkeley Springs, the cultural differences between the antique car people and the Fairfax coffee house are right there as they eye each other warily across the street. This tension is happening in every state and every town in America. It is early still, and we have more questions than answers.