At first Mrs. Johnson thought it was just a smudge. But no, it was GWAR. She was so startled that she jumped back and placed her right hand in the deep fryer.

This is a small town. Doesn’t take much to get people excited, so the news of the mysterious tour apparitions made the rounds pretty dog gone fast. And it wasn’t just GWAR. Other schedules appeared, like the ones for 311, Dave Matthews Band and Aaron Carter, all sharing the spotlight on the refrigerator door between the Jerry Falwell kitchen magnets, and the note reminding Mrs. Johnson to take her canary to the vet for her annual shots and beak sanding.

Of course, the sheriff came out to look the refrigerator over and see if any laws were broken. There weren’t. The sheriff’s aunt brought a picnic basket filled with goodies and we all ate fried chicken and watched the dates for Bush appear right next to the water dispenser on the refrigerator door. The sheriff’s boy wants to be a big Hollywood director when he grows up, and he said that he just might make a movie about the tours and the refrigerator some day.

All the other locals – the brain-damaged barber, the inbred from the filling station and Otis the town drunk – came out to see the tours. When the Nelly Furtado appeared, it shook poor Otis up so bad that he went on the wagon for three days straight.

Pretty soon the out-of-towners started pouring into our little community. Most of them came from Mount Pilot, and they were all pretty impressed when the schedule for Neil Diamond appeared. Of course, the media was there, newspapers, radio, even TV. And pretty soon our little community was on the national news, with Dan Rather questioning whether the tours were a scientific fluke, or a message from God.

Yep. This is a small town. And everybody was pretty excited about the tours on Mrs. Johnson’s refrigerator. That is until this big city company named Clear Channel Entertainment came out and bought the refrigerator from Mrs. Johnson and promptly booked it for a three month amphitheatre tour.

After that, nothing much ever happened here again. Except for the space aliens that landed last Thursday and turned us all into pod people. But that was just a minor setback and we’re all over that now. Yes, sir, nothing but peace and quiet in this little town we call home.

And you can quote me on that. My name’s Barney. I’m the deputy.