about two and a half seconds to get down from the carriage and up the book shop steps onto the porch. In their struggle not to fall on their faces, they grabbed their stuff and ran.)
     Next, there's a wonderfully slow pan of our green and white, maple leaf-shaped book shop sign. It is shown hanging over our vine-covered wrought-iron fence to which the director had instructed some technician to tape (or twistie) a bountiful amount of purple wisteria blossoms. Then, the by-this-time-winded family is joined on the front porch by scampering pee-wee talents, that is, five or six adorable local child actors whose parent-handlers watched over them carefully from just beyond the cameras. The pee-wees were instructed to "LET'S GO! MOVE IT!" when the family whizzed by so the kids could be shot scampering excitedly into the smoke-filled shop. Why smoke-filled? Very simple. Because the director, who, rumor had it, directed the Pepsi ad in which Michael Jackson's hair caught on fire, likes interior shots to be smoke-filled. Anyway, nobody caught on fire and it would be hard to actually prove that the pee-wees will never grow to their full height, although I'm sure a case could be made. Finally, the cameras show a very animated, spellbinding Colleen Salley, a professional story-teller who teaches children's literature at the University of New Orleans. While brandishing a Gaston-the-Cajun-Alligator puppet, she reads Gaston Goes to Mardi Gras by James Rice to very spellbound kids.
     This story of our Visa commercial not only has a happy ending, which is that out-of-town and tourist sales have greatly increased at the Children's Book Shop, it also has a heroine. The person who pulled off this awesome coup is Cindy Dike, the managing

partner of Maple Street Children's Book Shop. She got us free advertising that would normally cost more than $500,000.00 (just to produce the commercial, not counting the air time) and which would have put a serious dent in her shop's annual advertising budget of $300.     
      The excitement started more than a year ago in May of 1991 when Adina Watchtel of BBDO, an advertising agency in New York, called Jane Stickney, who works at Maple Street Book Shop next door to Cindy. Offering to pay for all of out Federal Express bills, Adina asked that we sent her a batch of photographs and any promotional material we had on the two shops on Maple Street. She explained that Visa wanted to do a bookshop commercial and that she had noticed in a tourist guide that we did not take American Express (Hurdle No. 1). Figuring it was a very long shot since Adina said there were other shops under consideration and having plenty of other work to do, Jane still offered to dig through our "archives" (cardboard boxes, old newspapers, scattered photos, lots of roaches) and get the package off that afternoon. After a few days, Adina called Cindy to say that the Children's Book Shop was still in the running but she needed more photos, inside and out, IMMEDIATELY, Federal Express, charge it to their account. Cindy hustled down to the Camera Shop, got film and help from them, and sent off the new photos, only to hear a few days later from Jane that Adina had called to say that "they were not going ahead with the project at this time."
      The process picks up a year later when Adina called Cindy to say that she couldn't find the batch of stuff we sent, although it was probably there somewhere, and maybe it'd be easier if we just