Job

(Crane Beach, November 2004)


We walked down to the Broadway to see a free showing of It's a Wonderful Life. Quite an experience, much more emotional than seeing it on television. I cried through much of it. We got hot chocolate to pay rent - seemed only fair. The place was crowded, and I sat next to a man who did not have access to laundry nor shower, and I could hardly mind. Only this morning did I think, I should have given him my cocoa. But I am a slow thinker, as writers often are.

We walked home in the raw damp, and talked. The emotional power of the movie is still potent. The facts of the plot have proved to be false dreams. Plastic from soybeans, suburban tract houses. That a lively downtown with music clubs is bad, (Ok, the Dime a Dance and Girls,Girls, Girls and casinos is....) But the town is not a disneyfied ideal either, it just happens to be where all of George's friends live.

So we figured out an ending. Potter dies. Of course. And dies intestate - not wanting to give anyone a profit motive for wanting him dead. Turns out, George is is only living kin, a distant cousin. Well, in a town that size Potter'd have to be related to someone. So the Baileys venture off to tramp around Europe for a year, and all the kids become photojournalists for National Geographic, or archeologists, or world renowned architects, always inviting George and Mary to visit them in their exotic locales. And George lives a long, long life, making life better for everyone in Bedford Falls, since he now owns the bank and pretty much everything else. So it becomes in effect a co-op town, as people who live there invest in windmill energy and trolleys and local theater and music, maybe even a small college. Violet will start a ballroom dance studio, and get to dance with lots of young men all her life, flirting with them until she's well into her ninties.

There will be grief and loss, heartache and trials, but no willful stupidity or criminal malice.

And no one descended from the Bailey shop gets involved in the S&L crisis or the corrupt housing loan practices.

Because George is Job, and that's how the story is supposed to go.