“The little girl—her name was Clare—now she loved machines. She saw a machine, she couldn’t wait to get her hands on it. She took apart can openers, bicycles, radios; when she was older she went to the mechanics shop and helped the men overhaul trucks and farm machines.

“Irrigation systems for the big ranches outside of town, control panels of locomotives, heavy diesels of the mining trucks rolling through town—this gal could repair anything. And so it was natural that, when she hit the middle teens, she got to thinking about makin’ machines of her very own.

“And sure enough: she built a machine to make flat beer fizz. She made a telescope that, when you pointed it at a star, would whisper its name. She made an engine that would run on honey. She made a plate that would clean itself.

“Finally Clare and I was talkin’ and I figured, maybe she needed a challenge. So’s I told her: how ‘bout a machine that makes paradise. I had always heard of paradise, but everybody talked like it was kinda far away. And nothing pissed me off more.

“So she thought about it. Then she built it. Now it took years, all the way into her early twenties, and it was tough because all the cowboys were pestering her, sayin’ as how they loved her like sweet loves sugar, like colts love runnin’, like springtime loves a mountain meadow. And she did do some runnin’ and yippin’ with those men; but she built the machine nonetheless. You worked the levers, and it gave you a vision of a promised land you could walk right into.

“There was a problem, though: it jes didn’t get that much use. Only them as could recognize paradise when they saw it, could use the machine. So for lots of people, it didn’t seem to do nothin’.

“So’s we talked about it, and changed the design—somethin’ that would make it useful to everyone, and at the same time any man or woman livin’ in the high-noon-and-midnight sweats of love—that is, folks still interested in Paradise—would have that extra bonus.

“So to this day the machine is still operatin’, right here in Eureka. And it not only makes paradise. It makes ice cream.”