To the Editor:

Everyone I know intends to be on Second Avenue Saturday at two o’clock to find out the name of a beer. I intend to be there myself. But I would like to enter a small dissent on behalf of the last three weeks.

Since that canvas went up, I have heard the seven lakes argued over at the counter at the hardware store, at the cleaning station, in the church basement, and once, at length, in the line at the truck. I have heard people defend Mud Lake in public — sincerely, with reasons. I have heard a man explain to his grandson why Whitefish is the deepest and therefore the most deserving, which is not a real argument, and the boy accepted it, which is why we are the way we are. Sixty-one people wrote a guess on a piece of paper and sealed it in an envelope for no prize whatsoever.

None of that would have happened if the Holts had simply painted the name on the sign in July. The covered sign has done more for the conversation in this town than most things the council has voted on, and it has done it by withholding one word.

So: congratulations to the Holts, and thank you for the wait. Saturday we will all learn the name, and by September it will just be the name, and we will have forgotten that for three weeks in August we had a mystery that hurt nobody and gave everybody something to be wrong about together. Somebody should cover the next sign too. Not for as long. But for a while.

D. Holstad
Misquah