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town was nothing more than a speck on a map. Specks don't matter much.
    Money does.
    After that, it was the factories. As one by one the farms failed, the factories took up the slack, providing jobs for the men and women who previously had worked the fields. Then the companies that owned the factories learned that they could make more money by moving their factories to other countries where people were even more desperate than the people in your town.
    And so again, one by one, factories closed and the people in the town were left with nothing.
    Many struggled to maintain their lives as they thought their lives were meant to be, farming, fixing broken farm machinery, and carving irregular-shaped bowls from walnut trees. But without steady economic nourishment, the towns eventually died and disappeared.
    Those who could moved to bigger towns, or, if they had a large enough grubstake, to the cities.
    Those who could not grew pumpkins and watched TV.
    In the meantime, the buffalo had all been killed, the prairie grasses plowed under, the Indians displaced or, more often, exterminated by European diseases, and the early settlers had gone scrambling off to Colorado and California in search of gold.
    It was into this environment that Paisley was born—and much later, myself—with nothing much going for it other than cheap land and high hopes.
    The founder and first mayor of Paisley was a man named Daschell Potts.
    Daschell Potts was a mysterious figure, having come out of nowhere and, later, having returned to the same place. But what he had going for him was a wardrobe of tailored white suits and crisp Panama hats. He wore a black string tie and fancied himself to be a Kentucky colonel, although he seemed more a caricature than the real thing.
    He told people that he had once written a book, although Mrs. Franks, the former bookstore owner and a well-read woman in her own right, said she had never heard of him.
    The selection of the name Paisley is worthy of mention. Apparently a group of city leaders met and during the discussion got into an argument about whether to name the town Red, Green, Blue, or Yellow, as each had a particular reason for favoring a certain color signifying something such as a wheat field, a sunrise, the big sky, or a verdant crop.
    After several rounds of indecisive voting and more rounds of quality Kentucky bourbon supplied by the well-heeled Colonel Potts, they compromised on the name Paisley, representing a combination of colors, and that was that.
    Now that I think about it, I guess I came within a hair's breadth of being born in a town called Plaid.
    The plastic novelty factory was the engine that ran the town for many years. Not surprisingly, it was owned in part by Colonel Potts.
    Colonel Potts was generous when it came to the support of the town. He built the elementary school, the middle school, the high school, the bandstand, and the ballpark.
    Once each year he sponsored the Paisley Olympics, which consisted of sack races, three-legged races, diving contests at Paisley Lake, and a stock car race that took place on Highway LL, to the calculated innocence of state authorities. There was also the equivalent of a state fair for domesticated animals. Best cow, best sheep, best chicken, and best rabbit—all were eligible for cash prizes from the deep pockets of Colonel Potts.
    Then the factory was sold to some bored foreign visitors and closed for good in Paisley, and the party was over.
    Colonel Potts simply vanished.
    The town soon followed.

Luck Happens
    ON A SECOND-FLOOR windowsill of Mr. Heath's store I spied what appeared to be a hummingbird nest.
    What a great opportunity for macro photos!
I thought.
    Perhaps there would be eggs in the nest. Possibly even baby hummingbirds. Although it was late in the season for babies of any species, I figured it was worth a look. I had never seen a baby hummingbird, much less photographed one.
    Luckily, the random hammering of the hotheaded Mr.