The Entertainer

Vicksville Missouri was a slice of Americana, a stolen canvas from Rockwell''s Collection. Flowers and elms lined the main thoroughfare, Mayfair Way, and a sunflower covered twenty foot by thirty foot sign painted by the fifth graders of Amerson School greeted visitors. Entering the town, hidden behind the row of densely planted elms just beyond the colorful welcome sign was Vicksville''s police station manned by portly Sheriff Bill Maitland who prided himself in running a crime-free town. Next to the police station was Hank''s gas station and next that was the Blue Bird Inn, in quite an ideal location only a few yards from the highway exit. Many a truck driver stopped there after a long haul for a bite to eat and some pleasant conversation. Dorothy Madison was the proprietor and she ran and clean and pleasant place. A few blocks down Mayfair stood Stella Trenton''s antique shop and Mrs. Nichol''s boarding home with rocking chairs on the porch for guests. At the end of the street around a little bend in the road was the cultural center of Vicksville, the Beaumont Theater. The Beaumont Theater was the brainchild of Lillian and Lawrence Lawson. No expenses had been spared in designing and constructing the exquisite edifice. Lillian had been an English teacher who loved theater and delighted in putting on musicals. She was a rigid woman in her early fifties who dressed with tailored suits with padded shoulders and who donned a tight black chignon. Her husband Lawrence was a second generation German immigrant who was dapper with speckled grey hair, a neatly trimmed moustache and darting eyes. He was "easy on the eye" and easy in his demeanor. The theater was built with so much promise that no one could phantom that it was soon to be a place on unspeakable horror. The opening of the theater had been the "talk of the town". The first three hundred patrons had an opportunity to have their names etched on brass plaques behind the seats for a donation of twenty