Standing in the Rainbow - Fannie Flagg [189]
“Norma, I told you we will go anywhere you want.”
“I’ve always wanted to go to Las Vegas and see Wayne Newton in concert.”
He would have gone to the moon had she wanted.
Revitalize Downtown Elmwood Springs
SIX MONTHS after they returned from Las Vegas, Norma finally found the civic cause she had been searching for. Somehow it seemed that after Neighbor Dorothy died, nobody ever came to town anymore. When she had her radio show, people came from miles around by the busloads, but now, with the new interstate, downtown was dying on the vine. At the next chamber of commerce meeting a brand-new committee to come up with solutions to revitalize downtown Elmwood Springs was formed and Norma was voted to head it. After walking downtown, clipboard in hand on a fact-finding tour, Norma reported her conclusion at the next meeting.
“We are too dull—what we need is a theme.”
“A theme? What kind of a theme?” asked Leona.
“A theme, something to make us different, make us stand out, set us apart from other towns so people will want to come here. We just don’t have any character; every building is just willy-nilly. We need to make an impression. When you drive in, what do you see? You see a sign that says Welcome to Elmwood Springs but we need more than that. We need to have one that offers an idea, a claim, something unique. Home of the World’s Largest Sweet Potato or something. We need to give people something unusual, an attraction that will make them want to get off the interstate and stop.”
They all fired at once:
“Can’t we think of something like that to get us in the Guinness Book of World Records?”
“Like the world’s largest cake. Or pie or pancake, even.”
“What about a waffle, the world’s biggest waffle?”
“But once you make it, it won’t last—you have to offer them something to see that’s still here.”
“We need something that’s indigenous.”
“How about home of the largest squash ever grown? Don’t you remember when Doc Smith grew that squash and sent it to the state fair?”
“How do you know it was the world’s largest squash? It was the state’s, but we don’t know for sure if it was the world’s.”
“All right, we can say the state’s largest squash—who’s going to know anyway? Or care?”
“I think they took a picture of it. We could find out, we could display that.”
“Well, I tell you what. I certainly wouldn’t turn off the interstate to look at a squash, much less a picture of a squash,” said Tot.
“What do we have a lot of?”
“Corn?”
“No, Iowa has corn. Idaho has the potato.”
“Rhubarb? Does anyone else have rhubarb?” asked Verbena, biting into a doughnut. “We could get a whole bunch and plant it real quick.”
“Why does it have to be a vegetable—why can’t it be a meat or a pastry or a beverage?”
Norma said, “I still think a theme would be better and permanent, like having Main Street look different somehow. Maybe have it look like a street in a different country, you know, like that Danish town in California.”
“What about this: We could have a town theme. All we would have to do is change everything into Swiss chalets and put bells on the cows and things. Call ourselves ‘Little Switzerland’ or something.”
“What cows? We don’t have any cows in town.”
“All right, you come up with something.”
“What about Hawaiian, I love that, everybody could wear muumuus and Dixie teaches the hula—maybe she could teach the whole town and we could give everybody a lei when they drove into town. Something like that.”
The next morning Norma drove around town trying to envision a theme that would, as the committee eventually had suggested, “more easily lend itself to fit the existing topography.” There was not a body of water to speak of, unless you included the lake or the springs, so the Hawaiian idea was out. Nor was there a mountain within three hundred miles. Elmwood Springs was as flat as the world’s largest pancake and inland.
Inland. She had a brainstorm. Why not capitalize on just that, Elmwood Springs right smack in the middle of the