Third annual Kicking Banquet and Dance.  The banner fluttered over the 4 lane road at the intersection of nowhere and the middle of nowhere as the townfold called it.  To a visitor that banner created amamn interesting thoughts.  To the people of Little Kicking it was an eyesour and point of contention.

Little Kicking is a small town.  Barely a bump in the road as most people are going somewhere, anywhere other than Little Kicking.  Three gas stations, two grocery stores and numberous struggling, always changing tourist 'gift' shops which are located on the main drive makes for a slow slog through town.  The only redemeing factor for the town was the fact it was located on the beautiful Pacific Ocean.  Miles of seemingly untouched beaches surrounded the town.  Pristine sands provided visitors the feeling that no one had walkjed on them.  As it was a common to have the beaches with nary a footprint embedded on their smooth surface.

 Little Kicking was, in big city terms, the bedroom community of Kicking which was located 24 miles down the road.  The big city as the teens called it, Kicking had fast food restaurants, a strip mall and a multiplex movie theater.  The adults who moved to Little Kicking loved it, their young adults did not.  It was generally tought that after graduation the newly minted adults would move away as soon as possible as there was not much to do in the town.  Jobs were hard to come by unless you wanted to clean bedrooms at the towns hotels.  

It ws spring and the town was gearing up for the tourist influx.  Businesses were sweeping the walk in front of their stores.  Many had made the trek to the big city to purchase four inch square pots of hardy flower starts to plant in the planters inf ront of their stores.  Bob, a local 'interesting' fellow walked from business to business with his pucket, dirty rag and squeegy offerint to wash windoes for a buck a window.  The City council met the previous week and decided this year was 'the year' to kick (no pun intended) up the advertising in hopes of stealing some of those bedroom tax dollers from Kicking.  

That brings us to the banner, flapping in the breeze over US 101 in the middle of town.  The Annual Little Kicking banquet and Ball was the town's attempt to kick off the year with a gala event.  In Little Kicking Gala ment putting on your dress shoes and a non flanner shirt and going to dinner.  The women started planning their dresses with many traveling to the big city to purchase fabric and patterns.  It was common for folks in Little Kicking to make their own clothes.  Many claimed it was a long lost art form that they were trying to revive.  REality was they were cheap and didn't much care for new trends in fashion.  The high school girls just rolled their eyes as their moms got out the scizzors and pins to make another a frame dress fashioned after a 1965 political icon.  

The mayor's wife,  Sandy, did not sew and the wouldn't be caut dead in a handmade piece of clothing.  Never mind that she never learned how to sew and was unable to work a sewing machine ever if she had one.  She took the 3 hour one wah drive to the mall in Southerland to purchase her dress.  It was an off the shoulder number in Pink with lace and fhinestones around the neckline.  She thought it made her look 20 years younger as the twerled in front of the 3 way miorrors in thside the dress shop dressing room.  Her daughter thought it was hedious.