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Needs WorkBy Rick Horowitz
Things around here were going pretty much the same, pretty much the way they'd always gone. And then George the Renovator came to town. I can remember it like it was the day before yesterday. It was a pretty little morning. A bunch of us were having our regular morning coffee over at Vera's, sitting in the window booth same as always, looking right across at the town square, when there's this big commotion out on the street, with horns honking and pigeons flapping, and then it's like the sun got covered up. It was George the Renovator's touring bus, pulling to the curb. We'd never seen a bus half its size -- not since the interstate went in, anyway -- and we'd never ever seen one done up quite like this. It was painted red, white and blue, with flags and streamers everywhere, and on the side facing us there was a giant banner stretching end to end. "Follow Me," it said. "I Bring Change." "Do you think he brought change for a ten?" asked Marv, reaching for his wallet. But the rest of us could tell right away this wasn't anything to joke about, so we just sat there watching. It took a minute or two, and then the big door on the side of the bus swung open, and out stepped this man we'd never laid eyes on before. He looked to his right, then to his left, and then he strolled right on into Vera's like he'd been coming there forever. We were the first ones he noticed. "You folks live around here?" he asked, then before we could even answer him, he added, "You've got a problem." Well, didn't that get our attention! Albert was the first to speak up. "What kind of a problem?" But the man kept talking like he hadn't even heard him. "Not just a problem," he said. "In fact, I'd call it a crisis." And then he went on to tell us how he'd been in town since just after sunrise, driving around and looking around in that giant bus of his, and what had caught his eye, right across the square from the very spot where we were sitting, was our town social hall. "There isn't nearly enough space in that social hall of yours," he told us. "Before you know it, you're going to run out of room. I can fix it for you." There in the booth, we all looked at one another. We'd had that social hall for 70, 80 years. We knew it wasn't the best social hall in the world, and certainly not the biggest. We already figured that someday we'd probably have to upgrade the place, but for what it was, it was perfectly adequate, at least for now. It made us feel secure, our social hall did, and we didn't see any reason to rush into anything. But we could tell George the Renovator saw it differently. He had blueprints. He had them in one of his pockets, and as he unfolded and unfolded them and spread them out right there on our table, we tried to figure out when he'd had time to do blueprints when he'd only been in town half a morning. We started worrying that maybe he was trying to sell the same blueprints to 50 or 60 other towns, too. Then we saw what was on the blueprints, and we started worrying even more. The downstairs entryway to the social hall, where people always hung their hats and coats? Gone. And upstairs? That whole corner where we always put out the cake and coffee? Also gone. Instead, there'd be a gift shop. To sell lottery tickets, George the Renovator said. Marv wrinkled his nose. "You said we needed more room," Marv said. "This looks like we get less." Then Albert jumped in. "We were thinking maybe you'd add on. But this here" -- and Albert pointed right at the middle of the blueprints -- "it looks like you're carving out." I figured it was my turn. "You told us we had a problem." "A crisis." "A something. But your plans don't do anything to fix it -- they only make it worse." George the Renovator tried to explain. He tried to say he wasn't really carving out, not when you looked at the big picture, and how it wasn't right to look just at the parts of the social hall that would be missing. When all his renovations were finished, he kept saying -- that's when we'd come out ahead. Or no worse off, anyway. And even if our social hall did turn out to be smaller instead of bigger, he said, we'd still have all the room we needed. "So what do you think?" he asked Marv. "I think you're all wet," Marv answered. "No I'm not!" he said. "Well, you will be." And that's when Vera got him with the ice water. Posted 3/10/05. Enjoy
Rick's dry wit twice every week -- and tell your friends!
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Rick Horowitz
