Standing in the Rainbow - Fannie Flagg [45]
On cue Bobby asked, “Then what happened?”
“Well, all of a sudden this huge sign made up of a thousand golden light bulbs lit up that said HOTEL LUMINAIRE right out in the middle of the lake.”
“Whoa!” said Monroe.
“Then we all went down and got into canoes and rowed all the way out to the sign. I don’t know which was a prettier sight, looking back at the hotel and seeing all those little green and red and yellow Chinese lanterns glowing in the dark or paddling right through the words HOTEL LUMINAIRE reflected in the water. It was a magical night, I can tell you that.”
“Now tell him about going to Coney Island.”
“I will. So . . . from there we went to New York City but it was so hot that every day we would ride the trolley way out to the ocean to Coney Island and walk around and see all the sights.”
Bobby punched Monroe. “Just wait till you hear the next part.”
“And we went to this big amusement park called Dreamland, so big that they had an entire little town in there, called Midget City. You could go in and nobody lived there except hundreds of tiny midgets.”
“Whoa!” said Monroe.
“They had their own little houses and stores and their own little midget mayor and tiny midget policeman. When we went through we met the nicest little married midget couple who had two normal-sized children that lived in New Jersey.”
“Oh, wow,” said Monroe, impressed out of his mind. “I’d give anything to see a town full of midgets.”
“It was a sight I’ll never forget.”
“What else do you remember in olden times that was great like that, Grandma?”
“Well, let’s see. I remember at the turn of the century, January the first, 1900—that was a big event.”
“What happened?”
“Oh, there were parties everywhere and at midnight of 1899 everybody in Independence went out in the street and rang bells and blew whistles and set off firecrackers and stayed up all night ringing in the next century. We thought the twentieth century was going to be the best one, but not more than fourteen years after that World War One started, so there went that dream out the window.”
After a moment Mother Smith said, “Well, boys, it’s getting late, so I’m going to leave you two to the stars and head on in.”
“Good night, Grandma.”
“Good night, Mrs. Smith.”
After she had gone Monroe said, “I guess she’s the oldest person I know.”
“Yeah,” agreed Bobby. “Just think, she’s a whole century old. . . .”
They lay there staring up at the stars. Bobby asked, “I wonder what it’s going to be like when it gets to be the year 2000?”
“I don’t know but I’ll bet everybody will be riding around in their own spaceships, going back and forth to Mars.”
“How old are we gonna be in the year 2000?”
Monroe sat up and counted on his fingers. He looked at Bobby incredulously. “We’re going to be sixty-four years old!”
Bobby sat up. He could not believe it. “Nooo!”
“We probably won’t even be alive, we’ll be so old.”
The prospect of being as old as the men who sat around the barbershop all day was a sobering thought. After a while Bobby said, “Monroe, let’s make a pact. If we’re both alive in the year 2000, no matter where we are, we will call each other up and say, Hooray, we made it, O.K.?”
“O.K., shake.”
They shook hands and lay back down. They both wondered where they would be and what they would look like but they could not even imagine it. To them the distance from this night, August the ninth, 1946, all the way to the year 2000 seemed as far away as Elmwood Springs was to the moon.
They stayed out in the yard and kept looking to see a falling star until Dorothy called to them and said they had to come in.
Time Flies
Other than Mr. Peanut coming to town and the Elmwood Theater showing four Gene Autry movies in one day and Bobby getting stuck in the arm at Monroe’s birthday party while playing Pin the Tail