Summary

Chapter 7 is titled “Grand Avenue” and opens with a photo of Dewey about to jump onto the card catalog. Vicki explained that a con man sold land in Spencer in the 1800s, presenting it as a developed town. The buyers arrived, found nothing there, but settled anyway. There were hard times and good times, such as a plague of grasshoppers that destroyed crops in 1876 followed by farmers' harvesting their best crops ever grown the following year. The railroad came, and the town grew. In 1931, a dropped sparkler set off a massive fireworks explosion on Grand Avenue, and half the buildings in town were destroyed. Decades later as Vicki was writing this, she said the aftermath of the fire “defines us” as a town. The boy's identity never became public knowledge, and no one cast blame. People reopened businesses wherever they could, and city...