A call for ideas and good cooks

My intention, for two weeks, has been to write about streets. I ended up in alleys. To be certain, I still have a problem with our streets but there’s no genie in that bottle. This town was plotted without the benefit of knowing a century later, a Dodge Ram 3500 pick-up and a UPS truck would need both sides of St. George Street (and six inches of the parking) to get where they needed to go. That’s not going to change anytime soon. I could write 5000 words about that (or the timing of stop lights) but it would be for naught – nothing but a complaint.

I saw the mayor and city manager last week during a photo opportunity. We talked briefly about infrastructure. We even talked about sidewalks. My pledge to both was I’d work with each of them, as often as possible, to promote opportunities where we find them and patience where we don’t.

After I left, I thought about the alley off St. George. A half dozen people and I have been eyeing that alley for over a month. It’s a wide-open, colorful, vine-covered space begging for company. One friend thought it would be perfect for music. Two others mentioned selling produce farmers market style. I wanted to put one lane of a bowling alley in. Everything said, we had a dozen ideas for that alley and hadn’t even thought of another space on St. Francis.

I recalled what occurred in my hometown, with the help of a different mayor. My town was a huge chicken plant. It had a name, this town. But for all practical purposes it was The Plant. It had some banks and a public square that had been cut down the middle to make it easier for all the trucks carrying chicken to get in and out. We had the street thing nailed. Anyone could get where he wanted to go. What we didn’t realize was we made it easy for nobody to stop.

A group of us were walking around that square, on a Saturday. It was so empty we felt we owned it. The only other person we knew to be around for certain was Jim, the pharmacist, who had the drug store that no longer had its soda fountain. Walking around, it was impossible to ignore the “ghost” signs on the bricks surrounding the area. We found everything from cola, to shoes to Big Smith jeans fading on the walls. We went down to an old gas station that closed 40 years earlier and figured out, in the garage, what we could do about the signs.

We made a ridiculously bold plan. We’d use the old gas station to sell an old hamburger recipe from a restaurant we all remembered called “Check’s”. Nobody knew why the hamburgers were so good. The taste was legendary and required crackers. The granddaughter of the deceased gas station owner was a chef. She figured it out. The plan was to sell a hamburger, soda and a Moon Pie for $7. We figured if we did it for a year, we could restore a sign. All we needed was a way to avoid permits and hassles. This was going to require three story scaffolds and road closures.

We met with the mayor on a Tuesday. He liked the idea but said he didn’t want to know anything about it – which was the same as saying he approved of it. His only request was we be mindful of the funeral home across the street from the gas station because part of the plan was to shut down an entire block. We talked to the director and asked him to call if there was a Saturday funeral. He liked the idea and became our best customer. He even loaned us orange cones. We started using social media. We called public radio and newspapers. Within two months, we had over 4000 people following our page because we would not only talk about sign restoration but also made up weather reports and re-told stories about climbing the missing water tower and seeing the UFO in 1979. It became a cause driven by stories.

In a year, we had restored all the original signs. People who had been dispersed across the country were sending in checks. Those who came for the $7 hamburgers, often paid $50. Two paid $500. People from all over the Ozarks were coming to town to use the signs as props for graduation photos, family portraits – even music videos.

We never imagined.

Here, we have all these wonderful alleys. I bet we can come up with something. All we need are some ideas, a cook and possibly a little wink from the mayor. But if we can do something with those alleys, I promise I’ll never mention the streets.