Shave Anwee!

by William E Burleson

My name is Sybil Voss, and I am the fictional mayor of Ahnwee, Minnesota.  

I’ve been asked by its author to write a thing about the new book, Ahnwee Days, which tells the story of my small, feisty, and likely doomed town.  

I’m not sure how I feel about having my and my town’s struggles chronicled in this way. Is all publicity good publicity? I guess. But an entire novel about our fight to save our town? Even good publicity can be exhausting.

I only want to save my town, and I’ll do whatever is necessary to succeed. I do not want to be a celebrity. Seriously—kind-of un-American, but it’s the truth. I’m just a mayor of a town of 200 people who got the job—so I’m told and told and told—because it was my turn.   

Don’t get me wrong: I’m proud to be the mayor of Ahnwee. I grew up here. I know every street and every soul in the town. I like the idea that as mayor I’m giving back, or, at least, trying to give back. I’m not sure people see it, or care, or are at least willing to acknowledge it, but I know I’m trying.  

Take our first ever Founders Day, also for some reason called Ahnwee Days in the title of the book. That was a great success. Well, success in that it happened. That counts, right? Not many people came, sure, and not many vendors set up and the ones that did didn’t make any money. But money’s not everything, I suppose. Sure, those stoners at Let’s Go Crazy Printz in Despar wrote “Flounders” on the banner. But you can’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good, right?  

But back to the book and my moment of fame. I don’t want it. I did understand that running for county board would provide a certain amount of notoriety. But just a tiny amount. How many of your county board members would you recognize if they were in line with you at the grocery store?  

Honestly, I’m not asking for much. All I want is for my father to snap out of whatever feedback loop he’s in that makes him only able to communicate using 1970s TV theme songs. I want my brothers to step up to the plate and help out. I want my friends to be happy. And most of all, I want people to leave my town alone.  

You could say that in the book, Ahnwee is just a proxy for jillions of small towns that struggle to not fall into disrepair, irrelevance, and uselessness. Big box retailers drive main streets into ruin. That hardware store that has just the right gizmo for your old faucet? Gone. Need a washer? Go to the Ubermart and buy a new faucet. How about factory farms? We know that small farmers (the farmers aren’t actually small, just their farms) are more likely to buy local, not to mention are often better stewards of the land. Pigs rooting around in a pen—good for the pigs and good for the land. Pigs in giant buildings with manure fields holding as much waste as a small city stinking up the place—not so good.  

Small towns are caught in a vicious cycle: Businesses leave and then there’s fewer places to work and less to do. People leave—especially young people—and then there’s even fewer businesses and even less to do. As a result, small towns get emptier and more and more gray.  

But those are all bigger problems for someone to solve. I want to talk about Ahnwee. We have our own unique challenges, such as:  

• A wind turbine that hits cars off the highway 
• A lake that glows in the dark 
• A smell of pig poo when the wind is from the south 

None of which are exactly good for Yelp reviews, if we ever got one.  

Those problems are obvious to anyone who visits our town, should someone ever do that. Less obvious but even more challenging is the town’s twin existential threats (as people like to say these days): The apparent lack of good title search companies in the area and a greedy so-in-so on the country board who’s in the pocket of the wind turbine factory on the freeway. 

As a result, it seems like everyone wants to tear down our little town.  

Realistically, we may end up chaining ourselves to bulldozers before this is over.  

But anyway: about the book. It was OK. I felt a bit insulted at times—no more 30-something, 20 extra pounds shaming!—but it got the facts right. Although, how could it not, since it’s fiction and the author made the whole thing up in his coffee-addled brain. How else can you connect balloon accidents and syphilis outbreaks in the 1800s to mobs attacking towns in the nineteen-teens, to passive aggression today? Takes a warped mind.

Join Sybils quest for the county board, and Shave Ahnwee! www.shaveahnwee.com

William E Burleson is the Author of Ahnwee Days, coming October 1, 2024.