The Curious Proposal
for
Prosperity, Nevada
by
Ellie Marrandette
Copyright 2012 by Ellie Marrandette
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever including Internet usage, without written permission of the author.
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter One
Prosperity Nevada was anything but its namesake. Once a thriving mining metropolis, the silver had long since dried up; and when no other industry came in to replace it, one by one, families packed up for better opportunities elsewhere. Only 2,026 residents remained in this withering community. Even teenagers who, once graduated from high school, moved on to Las Vegas, Reno, Sacramento or Phoenix, to find advantages and adventure never to be found in this place again.
This was the very thought on Ella Peterson's mind as she drove her Taurus past one out-of- business, boarded-up store-front after another. Can we ever bring back a once thriving town? She wondered. Except for the lakeside marina, a rarity in Nevada, there was nothing much to offer in this sleepy desert town anymore. With a two year drought adding insult to injury, there wasn't much hope of advertising the “come to our beautiful lake” tourist aspect of Prosperity either.
She parked her car in front of McPherson's Mercantile & Grocery, one of two remaining grocery stores still in existence. This one was privately owned and had been founded by hardy Scottish settlers traveling west to California in 1898. Taken in by its diverse desert mountain landscapes, cacti-covered buttes and pristine lakeside property, it didn't take long before they decided to put down roots.
Rolling down her window Ella called out to her friend and store owner, Rosie McPherson, who was sweeping up a couple of stray Styrofoam cups on the walkway. “Hey gal, are you coming to the meeting tonight?”
Rosie leaned her weary, old bones against her broom and sighed. “We'll come, but I don't see what good it will do.”
Putting on her most encouraging smile, Ella replied, “Ah, come on, Rosie. The best and brightest of Prosperity will be there. We'll find a way out of this depression yet, you'll see.”
“Well do what you want, but Pete and I might be the next to leave, “she stated pessimistically, then added, “I'll bring pies tonight.”
“Great, I'll see you at seven.”
Rosie nodded and turned away muttering, “Might just as well bring them pies. There's nobody here's gonna buy 'em,” as she swept up the last of the debris.
Ella drove up to her private real estate business, parked her car and walked into her office. There on the side of her desk were files of residents who had recently listed their homes, hoping to get out from under their mortgage before the bank foreclosed on them. Little hope of that. Wistfully, she looked out her window and thought, I'm good, but I'm no miracle worker. Heaven help us, because we certainly need a miracle.
She had approached the mayor about this evening's meeting last week. She told him that if he would invite the most influential business people in town to a brainstorming meeting on how to bring back business to Prosperity, then she would host it. Luckily he agreed.
The first guests began arriving shortly after 6:30 that evening, as Ella was scurrying with last minute preparations.
“Do you need help with that?” Beth Martin, the Mayor's administration assistant and her best friend offered, as she saw Ella mixing a pitcher of Country Time lemonade in the kitchen.
“Thanks,” Ella replied gratefully. “I sure hope this meeting goes as planned.”
“Honestly Ella, you've been my friend for years but I don't see how you can be so content to stay in this tiny little flea-bitten town. You mark my words, someday I'm gonna fly away just like those other college kids did years ago! I should have left when I had the chance.”
“Beth, you've been saying that for as long as I've known you and yet here you are, working for the Mayor, complaining but staying put. You think someday some knight in shining armor is going to whisk you off in his chariot and you'll be history. Fat chance of that happening.”
“I'm telling you, someday . . . someday.”
Ella rubbed her hands on a paper towel and remarked, “I don't know why I'm so nervous about this meeting tonight. After all, it was my idea.”
“Because one, you didn't leave when you could have; two, you hate to fail at anything and . . .” Dan Marshall declared as he marched into the kitchen, grabbed a cookie and finished his thought, “three, you're one of the few who seem to think there are real unicorns and leprechauns in the world.”
“Meaning . . . you think I'm a crazy for wanting to save Prosperity? Dan, our town's name has become a laughingstock in Nevada!”
“No, I'm not saying you aren't optimistic, just unrealistic,” Dan retorted. “Ella, there comes a time when one has to give up on the dream. Nothing's going to save this god-forsaken town.”
“I guess you're entitled to your opinion, Dan. I just don't happen to agree with you.” and with that, she sloshed the pitcher at Beth, picked up the plate of cookies and marched into the other room.
Dan had a way of infuriating her. If she said white, he'd undoubtedly say black. She considered him a busybody with way too much time on his hands! He had been head of the local post office for nearly forty years and therefore knew everyone in town. He had seen Prosperity turn from its prosperous, glory days to these downtrodden times, thus making him skeptical that anything could turn it around.
Dan chuckled to himself. He loved to tease her. Watching Ella grow up over thirty-five years, he remembered her as a perplexing, argumentative teenager. She had been adopted by the Peterson's as a sweet but spirited three year old. As the best friend of her adoptive parents, Mary and Joe, Dan had wondered if his friends had lost their minds! Since they had never had children of their own and were forty some years of age at that time, quite unlikely to care for a rambunctious youngster without being either exhausted or driven crazy in the process.
Mary had laughed, “I'm not worried Dan. She's smart as a whip and a little angel. We wanted a child so much and they've assured us she comes from good stock.”
Yeah, well so do farm animals, but I don't want one in my house. But Dan wisely kept his thoughts to himself for once.
Sure enough, there came a time when Ella became that typical, headstrong teenager he had predicted she'd become. She ran with the wrong crowd, got a tattoo and began drinking to fit in. Twice, Joe had to drag her back home after Nick, the local Sheriff, called him in the middle of the night.
“So, does Mary still believe Ella's a little angel?” Dan asked his friend one day after he had picked her up from Prosperity’s historical 1904 police station. 'Well Joe, should I remind you that Satan's an angel too?”
Joe simply smiled, stating, “Well, we think she's just ‘feeling her oats’ as most teenagers do and so what, we love and wanted her, so we're willing to take the good with the bad. She'll outgrow it.”
Her attitude did in fact, mysteriously turn around as quickly as it began after she left to study business at Arizona State University in Phoenix. Graduating with a 3.76 grade point average, she fulfil
led her parents dream and even more so when she returned home. No one knew why, but she came back as a poised young woman. Prosperity, in all its downtrodden glory, let out a sigh of relief, grateful that any young person actually wanted to stay. Contrary to her friends, Ella never had desire to leave for greener pastures after that. In fact she pursued her real estate license and never stopped believing in a Prosperity turn-around. Married once, it didn't take; she now lived on her own in the large home her parents left her after their deaths in 2004.
In her living room, Ella graciously greeted her guests. Besides the mayor, Bob Jefferson; attending tonight was police chief, Nick Asher, grocery store owners Rosie and her husband Pete, Judy Boswell, the principal of Prosperity Consolidated School, Jim Potter the town's newspaper founder and editor, and Pastor of the United Fellowship Church, Thomas Wilson. Dan came in and took a seat near the fireplace. Ella nodded to the mayor, who proceeded to call the meeting to order.
“Well, as you all know,” the mayor began, “we have a real challenge on our hands. How can we restore 'prosperity to Prosperity'? Anyone have any ideas? I'm sure we've all been thinking about it.”
He looked around the room at the others, all of them uncomfortable, none wanting to make the first silly suggestion. Finally, one by one, they offered practical ideas: the Mayor started off by mentioning lowering taxes to encourage business renewal and growth, Dan suggested a search committee to bring in a corporation or two, Judy offered scholarships to attend school here, Beth thought of a raffle to give away a house and even suggesting a writing campaign to find a celebrity to buy the entire town. Each one had pros and cons but no quick solution to a fast moving, deteriorating problem.
Then Ella spoke up, offering an unusual proposal. “Okay, hear me out before you all start laughing. What does Roswell, New Mexico and Loch Ness, Scotland have in common?”
Mayor Jefferson shrugged and laughed, “They both have strange people living there?”
“Close . . . they have a booming economy because of some strange phenomenon that occurred there!” When her guests didn't make the connection immediately, Ella went on. “You see, everyone who says they saw something weird occur, were deemed credible, responsible people! These eye witnesses were doctors, priests, policemen, hotel owners, Statesmen . . . regular successful people who were viewed as legitimate, believable testimonies to a strange, abnormal occurrence.
Beth piped in, “Yeah, you're right. Even Astronaut Buzz Aldrin claimed he saw a UFO. No one disputed his sanity or credibility.”
Dan piped in, “Yeah, so did Edgar Mitchell and Gordon Cooper if I remember right. What are you getting at Ella?”
“Look we're desperate here. Does anyone really want our little town to vaporize into a ghost town? Which it will be, if we don't do something soon! I know what I'm proposing is taking a really ‘off the wall’ approach and we’d have to make a pact that if we decide to do this, everything we discuss would remain in this room. One slip and we'd be a laughingstock. We'd have to be in it together or not at all.” Ella saw both interest and skepticism in their faces, before continuing, “Look around . . . everyone here is a legitimate voice for this town. Who would question a police officer, a mayor or a pastor? The only one we would have to worry about is Dan, because we know postal workers are all crazy.”
As everyone laughed, Dan quipped, “Oh good one, Ella. Right back at ya.”
“Seriously guys, I believe we could pull this off. A monster in the lake wouldn't work, but we're in the perfect location to spot UFO's,” Ella offered. “Remember those lights over Phoenix? That's still a controversy and some will always believe it was real whether it was or not.”
Nick shook his head, skeptical of the proposal, “With the advancement in science, computers and the like, I doubt if we'd be able to get away with it in this day and age, Ella.”
“Then we couldn't be too specific, especially at first,” Ella stated.
For a moment no one spoke, mulling this around in their heads. Finally Judy, scanning their faces, spoke up, “Well, she's right about one thing we'd have to make a pact. We'd all be in this together or not at all. But when you think about it, we could just pull it off.”
“First . . . a few of us would have to see it on different nights,” Rosie suggested, joining in. “Build up the suspense, you see.”
“Right, and then build up the credibility with another sighting and then another.”
“. . . and then what???” Dan piped up, “We have no spacecraft, no alien! How do we keep the “suspense” going?”
At that Ella raised her voice and stated, “I just might have a contact that could help us. He was someone I dated in college and works in the Air Force now. One of his jobs was to monitor and debunk UFO sightings.”
Nick also spoke up. “I don't know if it helps but I have a buddy who worked at SETI.”
“It still wouldn't negate the fact that it couldn't land! They'd do tests and discover it was a fake!” Pastor Wilson commented.
“How about a contest?” Jim Potter, editor of the local newspaper, Prosperity Times asked, speaking up the first time.
Heads turned, giving him their undivided attention. “Let's just suppose . . . it doesn't land. One credible person announces he's seen an alien spacecraft flash across the sky, someone else confirms he's seen it too and we release that to the public. I can see the front page headlines now; Strange Phenomenon Seen across Prosperity Skies! Air Force or Alien??? The next night a couple more residents see it again . . . then one night, a group of us claim we saw it crash into the mountains maybe two, three, four miles away – we're not sure exactly where, but we're curious to find it. We offer a huge reward to anyone who can help us find actual evidence.”
“Wow, of course – they couldn't find something that never existed in the first place; but they’d need gasoline, food, a place to stay . . .” Dan interrupted. “In other words, instant cash! Jim, you might be on to something there.”
The others perked up and started to speak over each other.
“We need a definite plan.”
“Someone should start writing these ideas down.”
Beth reached for a pad of paper, took out a pen and began taking notes.
“We'd want one person in charge of all this, you know. Communicating with everyone else.”
“Who is going to release the news to the media?”
“How soon . . . “
Suddenly a piercing whistle was heard, causing an abrupt stop to the conversations. “Before we go any further people,” Nick, leaning against the wall, in all his police officer authority, broke in. “You need to know this is illegal, it's fraud. You could go to jail.”
After a long, contemplative pause, Rosie quietly spoke,” Nick, Prosperity IS jail . . . and there's no way out. It can't get much worse than this.” Her husband Pete piped in, reaching for Rosie's hand. “I'm also in. The alternative is watching our life's work and money go down the drain. It's worth the gamble. Where would Rosie and I go if we went bankrupt? We couldn't afford to go to an assisted living facility. To me, losing everything we've worked for is a fate worse than jail.”
“I agree with Rosie,” Jim stated. “My paper circulation is down to less than a thousand papers a day and that's on a good day. I was just about ready to pack it in myself.”
The others agreed and looked anxiously to Nick for his official endorsement.
Finally, Dan spoke softly, asking, “Nick, you could be the only one who could kill this for us. If you're not in, we've folded up our town right now and we might as well place the closed sign at the entrance.”
“Okay . . . okay.” He slowly nods his approva
l. “I just wanted to make sure we were all on the same page before I risked my job. So you're all in, huh?” When everyone else agreed, he added cautiously, “Well, as a credible witness, I suppose I should be one of the first to say I've seen it . . .”
Chapter Two