After removing unnecessary signs in the fresh-air park, my financier said we needed something for “all the people.” I suggested a cannon; she thought a statue would be better. I said, “Maybe we can find one with an angel carrying someone to heaven. On the base, we can inscribe ‘This is what happens when you use drugs.’ ”

The hunt was on. As luck and money follow each other, we found one.

The owners decided to sell it if we also bought the hallowed ground it stood on and agreed to put something on it for “all the people.” We signed the papers.

We went into a closed-door session with my two grandkids, to see what we could come up with.

We named our group Passion and World Peace, Amen, or PAWPA for short. We needed a profound identity and an acronym that a school principal could understand.

Then we built a wall. For a mural. Of a book club. Titled “The Last Book Burn.”

On the table were “Huckleberry Finn,” “Catcher in the Rye,” “Autobiography of Malcolm X,” “Animal Farm,” “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” “Lolita,” “Go Tell It on the Mountain,” “Catch-22,” “The Color Purple,” “Satanic Verses,” “The Turner Diaries” and “The Origin of Species.”

Around the table were 12 FAME-ous ancestors: Martin Luther King, George Wallace, Muhammad Ali, Dale Earnhardt, Rock Hudson, Anita Byrant, Pancho Villa, Jesse Owens, Adolph Hitler, Sitting Bull, Linda Lovelace and Don Rickles, with Clarence Darrow as mediator.

We installed music for “all the people” and to drown out noise coming from the ROCO Rooters.

Sundays between 10 a.m. and noon, Hank Jr. will sing “Why Can’t We All Just Get A-long Neck.” John Lennon’s hit “Imagine” begins at noon.

We will add tunes as we get requests. Phone them in at 1-800-555-W.H.A.T? (“We’re Here All Together?”) There goes another acronym for the schools: We want “all the people” to be happy!

— Whitey Harwood

Rowan County