ALONG THE WAY

along the way Standin' on a Corner in WINSLOW, ARIZONA... a Song Lyric Inspires a COMMUNITY PARK

JANICE GRIFFITH'S IDEA AT FIRST DREW nothing but groans. Why not build a park commemorating the song "Take It Easy," which mentions the small northern Arizona town of Winslow?

Never mind that the Eagles song, recorded in 1972, was nearly 30 years old. Never mind that its only connection to the place is this verse: Well, I'm standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona, and it's such a fine sight to see. It's a girl, my Lord, in a flatbed Ford, slowin' down to take a look at me. And never mind that critics said the last thing Winslow needed was a park dedicated to an old song about the angst of youth.

Why not? countered Griffith, the director of the Winslow Historical Society's Old Trails Museum in Winslow. "People all over the country heard that song. That's what they remember about Winslow. That and Route 66."

Griffith was sure that visitors would buy into a Standin' On the Corner Park. The biggestselling souvenir in Winslow is a T-shirt joining the song with a 1946 photo from the town's heyday of a man leaning up against a downtown lamppost and the words "Standin' on a corner in Winslow, Arizona."

The question most often asked by museum visitors is the location of the corner made famous by the Eagles song. The second most asked question is who was the girl in the flatbed Ford?

"Boy, we'd like to know, too," Griffith admits. "Right after the song came out, we started asking everyone within 50 miles who owned a flatbed Ford if they knew who the girl was. No one came forward." Actually, Griffith says, co-writers Jackson Brown and Glenn Frey contend the girl represents any young American beauty being admired from a street corner in "anytown USA by a guy who has the time to give her his attention."

Griffith had another motive for making the park a reality besides stimulating tourism. Just across the street from the Old Trails Museum, a historic drugstore had burned down in 1992. The soda fountain at the back of the store had been the prime hangout for Winslow youth and when the rubble was cleared away, theempty corner became a missing front tooth in Winslow's smile. The park would fill the gap. But Griffith's proposal ran into skepticism.

The community's biggest objection was erased when the Tom Kaufman family, who owned the empty lot, became convinced the park idea was viable and, in 1996, donated the land to the town in exchange for a bronze plaque honoring their achievements. But questions about the cost of construction still lingered.

Griffith made a public appeal for ideas on how to pay for the park. Everyone had one, it seemed. A growing core of supporters endorsed several proposals: a local funding drive, a statewide campaign for donations, an Internet appeal to out-of-state tourists and Route 66 fans and selling paving bricks with an inscribed personal message.

The biggest boost came when an anonymous member of the Eagles, hearing that Winslow was willing to name a park after their song, donated $2,500 to the fund in 1995. That donation became a public relations coup and gave the park idea legitimacy.

With a growing war chest, the park committee commissioned Nevada sculptor Ron Adamson to make a life-size bronze statue of the young man. Artist John Pugh of Los Gatos, California, was hired to paint a mural to hide the fire-scarred brick wall where the old drug store had joined the other buildings on the block.

Pugh, whose specialty is creating an illusion of reality, painted a mural of a vintage Winslow storefront with the girl and the flatbed Ford reflected in the plate glass window.

The park was dedicated in the fall of 1999 before a crowd of 3,000. A live band played the Eagles' "Take It Easy," and the audience roared out the lyrics.

Standing On the Corner Park has proved to be a huge hit with the public. Every day, small groups of visitors shuffle along with bent heads as they browse the various messages and memorials inscribed on the paving bricks.

A couple from Kansas were reading the bricks one day when the girl's eye fell on one with a red heart and the words "Stephanie, will you marry me?" Her boyfriend had read about the park, ordered a brick with the marriage proposal from the park committee and then drove to Winslow with his intended. Half of Winslow showed up, carrying cameras to record Stephanie's tearful acceptance and beaming with pride in their new park. All