How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
Inside the store there were a lot of counters, with sales ladies behind some of them and a lot of female customers looking over the goods. They all seemed to be talking to each other, their voices high-pitched and excited, kind of like chicken voices in a yard, when one hen or another had scratched up something special. Tom felt a kind of wildness in his eye as he looked around. There wasn't another man or boy in the whole store. (11.5)
This is Tom's first time going into a store in town to buy gifts, and he picked quite the place to start. Not only is going into the store a new experience, but Tom also finds himself to be the only guy in sight. Sure, he's used to interacting mostly with his mom and younger sisters, but this is a whole new chicken coop. And see what the author did here: by making Tom think of the ladies in barnyard terms, we get yet another reminder of how uncomfortable he is here and what a country lad he is at heart.
Quote #2
[The road to the Dolans' property] ran narrow, through close-grown spruce to begin with, with sharp curves, but the minute he came under the trees he felt at home. He didn't need to see to find his way. […] Now it was easier, for the snow made the road white under the dark spruces, as black as sorrow Birdy had once said of them. There was no wind, not even the sound of it, and the snow that came to ground dropped as light as flour sifted through a sieve. (13.13)
Tom's lives a few miles outside of town and he knows the countryside well. If you want proof, it's right here in his ability to find his way home in a blinding snowstorm at night. That's a built-in GPS, right there. Beyond that, Tom's countryside is described poetically, with a mix of sadness and beauty: there's that simile describing the road "as black as sorrow" and then another depicting the snow falling like flour through a sieve. The novel is full of these kinds of complex descriptions of the countryside, and the text lets nature be many things—not all good or all bad.
Quote #3
[…] Tom realized, though he had never noticed before, that there were telephone lines at the top of the hill with a pole there serving the depot. Meanwhile a couple of more men came into the office one of them carrying the telephone itself. (16.1)
Pick up your smartphone and do a search for what telephones looked like 100 years ago. Here's a hint: you couldn't search for anything on them at that point. But to Tom, this was cutting-edge technology. History nugget: the first telephone lines actually were installed in Boonville in 1900. Yup, that's right around the time when the novel is set.