Mayor Folsom of Fawling Snow

09.26.06 10:09AM by Amos

Ebert Folsom was the Mayor of Fawling Snow, a small hamlet tucked between Cragg Mountain and Bilbo Creek and located on the far edge of obscurity. He’d been the Mayor for thirty years. A title he inherited from his poppa, Buck Folsom, the founding father of Fawling Snow. There weren’t any elections in the sleepy town. No need really. The people did what needed to be done and if a problem became stubborn a community meeting in Sachel Horn’s barn typically put the matter to rest. Mayor Folsom usually banged his daddy’s gavel a few times but the echo was hollow. He knew his title as Mayor was a social endearment. Towns like Fawling Snow didn’t need Mayors. They needed rain and sunshine.

But Ebert dreamed. He dreamed of grand ideas and wondrous accomplishments. In particular, he dreamed of steel churches and a five lane superhighway running through his town. He’d wake at night, shaking with the power of a vision and thirsty for the realization of a day grown bold. Ebert tried to sell his ideas to the humble citizens of Fawling Snow, tried to impress on them a vision of metal and concrete. He packaged them as progress and framed the conversation in polished walnut and ebony need but the citizens could not recognize an idea whose time had come.

They were simple folk who followed the seasonal tides. They believed in summer rain and the rich reward of soil properly tended. Highways, steel and the rumble of greedy machines made them anxious. “We don’t need these things,” they told Mayor Folsom, but his fever was relentless. His vision insistent. His lust heavy and thick, a soup of possibility and reward that rendered him drunk and reckless.

The trucks came on the Eve of Spring, under cover of night. They dumped and rolled Mayor Folsom’s vision into a straight line of black tar and endless motion. The people of Falwing Snow watch from their huts as their obscure town grew. And grew. And grew. The progress was ravenous and wild, gulping up the countryside and devouring quaint notions. Bilbo Creek dried up. Cragg Mountain was cut into parcels and sold to glossy people with white smiles. And as the land changed so to did the humble folks of Fawling Snow. They soon came to inhibit the qualities of their tar and steel world becoming hard and unbending.

Mayor Folsom moved up a great chain of power leaving behind Fawling Snow, grandkids and an estate of wondrous wealth, accomplishments, and kickbacks. During his last year of life, a reporter asked Mayor Folsom what he missed most about life as a young man. “I miss banging my gavel in Sachel Horn’s barn on the outskirts of Fawling Snow,” he replied. “Fawling Snow? What’s that,” asked the reporter. “It’s a promise we never keep,” said Mayor Folsom as he reached for a crystal glass full of amber Brandy and illusion.

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