The first time anyone in Binger County heard the phrase “tourism initiative,” they assumed it meant another mural, maybe a sunflower festival, or, at most, a modest water tower repaint. No one expected the Lamp. It appeared first as a rumor: a whisper drifting down the aisles of Ozzie’s Hardware, caught between the feed sacks and the impulse-buy screwdrivers. Did you hear? Chickasha’s going to build a giant leg lamp. Like the one from the movie. But bigger. Way bigger. By the time the city council agenda went public, the Lamp had grown in the telling, from fifteen feet to thirty, then forty, before settling at an improbable, structurally questionable fifty. A fiberglass monument to kitsch. A glowing testament to the town’s new, maybe misguided ambition. The night of the vote, the council chambers filled with the kind of crowd usually reserved for bond issues or controversial playground shade structures. Retirees clutched printouts from the internet; teenagers filmed on their phones; th...