Mount Rushmore Mania

By Katie Fitzgerald

I have never lived through a wilder time than the summer when the guys of Mount Rushmore—George, Abe, Tommy, and Teddy—decided to form a boy band. I worked in the visitor center, and as far as any of us knew, the boys had never heard pop music. Yet one night Abe started belting out “Emancipate My Heart” and the other guys jumped in to harmonize as though they’d just been waiting for their cue.

From the start, it was clear Abe was the star. His deep, smooth voice resounded through the Black Hills, giving me chills. Before word reached the rest of the country, we park employees were the only ones at their concerts, and I always felt like Abe sang just to me. When he winked, I blushed. I shortened my name from Jennifer to Jenny so that when I sang along to “Penny (We Just Make Cents)” I could substitute my name.

Before long our boss saw a publicity opportunity and contacted the local news affiliate. The guys’ performances started airing on TV, first in South Dakota and then across the country. After that people flocked to watch them live, and George quickly developed a strong following. When he took his hair down during “The State of Our Union,” teenage girls were known to faint, and we had to make sure we had extra EMS staff on hand to help revive them. His signature song was “Monumental Love.” I’d never witnessed so many people sing along to anything.

The Tommy and Teddy fans were few and far between, and they were pretty casual in their devotion, but the rivalry between George and Abe’s followers turned ugly fast. The Marthas and the Mary Todds, as the rival groups of extreme devotees were known, became more and more entrenched in their hatred for each other as summer wore on. Between songs, Abe and George would beg them to keep the heckling and booing to a minimum, and they even cowrote a song called “A House Divided” in an effort to promote unity, but the most militant fans only drifted more obstinately to the extreme ends of the spectrum.

By the end of summer, I could sense the strain within the band. Abe looked tired every night, and it became clear his heart wasn’t in the songs like before. George wrote a slow, dark ballad comparing life to winter at Valley Forge. He added new dreary verses each night until the song took seventeen grueling minutes to perform. Tommy tried to revive the original spirit of the group with a catchy tune called “The Indepen-dance,” but he didn’t have the fan base—or the requisite legs—to get a dance craze going.

One night in August, we let the crowds in as usual, making sure to confiscate from the Marthas any real axes they’d snuck in among their foam ones and refusing entry to the Mary Todds until they removed the extra-tall hats they used to obscure the Marthas’ view of the boys. Then we set up the light and sound equipment and waited for the Mount to come to life. A few times I thought I saw the blink of an eye or the twitch of a lip, but after about twenty minutes, it became clear they weren’t planning to perform.

Crowds continued to gather on a nightly basis for a couple of weeks, but they became increasingly discouraged, not to mention belligerent, as night after night the granite faces of their beloved boy band singers remained frozen in silence. By the end of the year, the mania subsided and life around here went back to normal.

I see the occasional tourist wearing a souvenir T-shirt from those days. They’re usually moms, dragging reluctant teens on a nostalgic tour of their lost youth. It’s impossible to tell the Marthas from the Mary Todds unless they identify themselves. An inexplicable number claim they were closet Teddy fans all along, despite the fact that all he did was sing bass and occasionally beatbox. I show them the small display we have commemorating the highs and lows of that summer and then send them off to see the boys.

If these women are anything like me, they stand there, gazing up at the faces of the idols of their misspent youth, remembering their expressions and mannerisms, voices and harmonies. Then they sing a few bars, hoping against hope that maybe, just once more, a familiar voice will start to sing along.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Katie Fitzgerald is a children’s librarian turned homeschooling mom of four daughters and one son. She writes short stories in the mystery, humor, and romance genres, which have appeared in online magazines and print anthologies. When she’s not writing, she’s usually listening to an audiobook at triple speed or buying used paperbacks to add to her to-be-read pile.

---

More Stories | Author Website | Instagram | Twitter