Steve Toltz - A Fraction of the Whole

1. Turn to our advantage that desultory tag “ Least Desirable Place to Live in New South Wales.” We should boast about it. Put up signs. Maybe even exaggerate it in order to turn it into a unique tourist attraction.

2. For Jack Hill, the town barber. While it is admirable that you continue to cut our hair despite the crippling arthritis afflicting you, the result is that this town has more bad, uneven, and downright mysterious haircuts than any town in the world. You are turning us into freaks. Please- retire your vibrating scissors and hire an apprentice.

3. For Tom Russell, proprietor of our general store, Russell and Sons. First off, Tom, you don’t have a son. And not only that, you don’t have a wife, and now that you’re getting on in years, it looks like you will never have a son. True, you have a father and it’s possible you yourself are the son your shop refers to, but as I understand it, your father died long ago, decades before you moved to this town, so the title is a misnomer. Secondly, Tom, who is doing your inventory? I was in your shop just yesterday and there exist items that no human being could possibly have any use for. Empty barrels, oversized pewter mugs, thong-shaped fly swatters, and by God your souvenirs are curious: one normally buys a model of the Eiffel Tower in France, at the Eiffel Tower, not in small Australian towns. I know it is a general store, but you have gone beyond that. Your store is more vague than general.

4. For Kate Milton, manager of the Paramount, our beloved local cinema. Once a film has been running for eight months, Kate, you can pretty much take it for granted that we’ve all seen it. Order some new films, for Chrissakes. Once a month would be nice.

I reread my suggestions and decided I needed one more. A big one. It’s impossible to articulate what I thought was wrong with the people of my town on a level deeper than bad haircuts and vague supermarkets- deeper problems, existence problems. I couldn’t think of a suggestion that addressed these directly. It was simply impossible to point to the bedrock of existence, show the crack, and hope that we could all ponder its significance without everyone acting all sensitive about it. Instead I thought of an idea to address it indirectly. I guessed that their problems had something to do with priorities that needed shifting, and if so, the underlying cause of that must be linked with vision, with what parts of the world they were taking in and what they were leaving out.

My idea was this: I wanted to adjust their perspective, if I could. That led me to suggestion number five.

5. On Farmer’s Hill, build a small observatory.

I offered no explanation, but I threw in the following quotes by Oscar Wilde and Spinoza, respectively: “We are all in the gutter but some of us are looking at the stars” and “Look at the world through the perspective of eternity.”

I reread the suggestions and with great satisfaction slid them into the awaiting mouth of my newly constructed addition to the town.

The suggestion box became the town’s conversation piece. Patrick Ackerman held an impromptu meeting where he read out my suggestions in a solemn voice, as if they had come from above, not below, where I was sitting. No one knew who had put the box there. They guessed, but they couldn’t agree. The townspeople whittled their friends and neighbors down to a short list of about eight possibilities, but nobody was a sure thing. They certainly didn’t suspect little old me. While I had been out of my coma a good many years, they still saw me as asleep.

Amazingly, Patrick Ackerman was enthusiastic about the whole thing. He was the kind of leader who desperately wanted to be fresh and progressive, but he lacked motivation and ideas and he seemed to adopt my suggestion box as his surrogate brain. He violently shouted down any derision and opposition, and because of his unexpected outburst of enthusiasm, the council, mostly from shock, agreed to every one of my suggestions. It was wild! I really wasn’t expecting it. For instance, it was decided that Paul Hamilton, the unemployed one-legged seventeen-year-old son of Monica and Richard Hamilton, would start immediately as Jack Hill’s apprentice barber. It was decided that Tom Russell had one year to remove the words “and Sons” from his signs, or marry and reproduce or adopt a child, provided that the son was white and from England or Northern Europe. It was decided that Kate Milton, the manager of the local cinema, should be diligent in procuring at least one new film every two months. It was unbelievable! But the real shock was to come. It was decided that plans should be immediately drawn up for an observatory to be built on Farmer’s Hill, and while the budget allocated was a paltry $1000, the spirit was there. I couldn’t believe it. They were really going to do it.

Patrick decided that the box would be opened only once a month, by him. He would peruse suggestions to ensure he didn’t inadvertently read out anything profane or offensive, and at a public meeting he would announce them to the town, after which there would be discussions and debates and votes on which were to be carried out and which were to be ignored.

It was a tremendous thrill! I can tell you, I’ve had one or two successes in life thus far, but none has given me the absolute feeling of satisfaction of that first victory.

While the observatory would take some time in planning, my idea of using the dubious title “ Least Desirable Place to Live in New South Wales ” as a tourist attraction was immediately put into effect. Signs were erected on the road where it fell into town, and on the other side, where it rose out of it.

Then we waited for the tourists to come.

Amazingly, they did.

As their cars pulled into our streets, the townspeople put on dour faces and shuffled their feet.

“Hey, what’s it like here? Why is it so bad?” the tourists asked.

“It just is,” came the mopey reply.

Day-trippers wandered the streets and saw in every face a look of despair and loneliness. Inside the pub, the locals acted miserable.

“What’s the food here like?” the tourists would ask.

“Terrible.”

“Can I just have a beer, then?”

“We water it down and charge extra. OK?”

“Hey- this really is the least desirable place to live in New South Wales!”

When the tourists moved on, the smiles returned and the whole town felt like it had played a great prank.

Everyone looked forward to the box’s monthly opening, and more often than not, it was brimming. The meetings were open to all, and it was usually standing room only. They routinely began as Councilman Ackerman announced his disappointment at the things found in the box that weren’t suggestions- orange peels, dead birds, newspapers, chip packets, and chewing gum- and then he’d read out the suggestions, an astounding array of blueprints for possibilities. It seemed everyone was caught up in the spell of ideas. The potential for the town to reach a higher place, to improve itself, to evolve, had caught on. People started carrying little notepads with them wherever they went; you would see them stop abruptly in the middle of the street, or leaning against the streetlamp, or crouched over the pavement, struck by an idea. Everyone was jotting down his ideas, and in such secrecy! The anonymity of the suggestion box allowed people to articulate their longings and desires, and really, they came up with the strangest things.

First were the practical suggestions pertaining to infrastructure and general municipal matters: dismantling all parking restrictions, lowering taxes and petrol prices, and fixing the cost of beer at one cent. There were suggestions aimed at ending our reliance on the city by having our own hospital, our own courthouse, and our own skyline. There were proposals for entertainment events such as community barbecues, fireworks nights, and Roman orgies, and there were countless suggestions for the construction of things: better roads, a town mint, a football stadium, a horse track, and, despite the fact that we were located inland, a harbor bridge. The list just ran on and on with ultimately useless proposals that our town’s council simply wasn’t fat enough to satisfy.