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Tinsel is a tiny little circle-shaped town that seems to sit near the edge of everything else. Proudly boasting the best stocked grocers this side of Sidley County. It has a sizable doctor/ dentist clinic and even fourteen beefy police officers. Although they don't see much crime in Tinsel; that is unless Billy Heeley's cousins are in town. The Tinsel police prep for the Heeley reunion like the city cops might prep for a major music festival. But this isn't a story about the Heeleys. This is about Tinsels most famous citizen; Tin man.

It was the year of the huge storms. The bridge leading out of Tinsel washed out. No one could leave Tinsel by car or truck and no one could come in either. Worse still the City couldn't get anyone to fix the bridge until the river beneath it went below flood stage and it was the rainy season.

Tin man lived in the center of Tinsel in a chicken-coop shaped house. He kept to himself mostly making little odds and ends out of scrap tin cans. He only had one good arm and no legs since his accident so he sat in a wheel chair most of the time. The kids use to say he never even looked up when people would toss cans in his yard for him to make things out of. He had an enormous pile of tin can sitting in his front yard. Then one night way past his usual hour's people heard a tap, tap, clink coming from the Tin man's house. It went on all through the night, and then through the next day and the next night too. The pile of tin cans from his front yard was shrinking.

After that people got so use to hearing Tin man tapping on his tin that they almost forgot to wonder what he was making with all that tin. Late at night when everyone was asleep Tin man was very busy with his tin cans. He made a real tin man to hold his mail box. He put a tin roof on his house and even a tin fence around his yard so people couldn't watch him making things with his tin. Everyone was amazed that a one armed no-legged man in a wheel chair could do all of that, but it seemed rude to ask him how. Soon the piles of cans got much smaller since the grocer was running out of things from its shelves with no one bringing in new groceries.

Since the bridge still wasn't fixed and things were running out they finally had helicopters make a food and water drop and some people took boats down the river to the next town for odds and ends but it was too hard for most folks to paddle a boat load of groceries uphill to get home. Still whenever anyone had tin cans they would still

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