We found the answer in Starting Your Own Business for Dummies, page 124: “Need money to expand your business? Time to pitch to investors.”

We’d pitched to investors before, to get money to start The Doughnut Stop, but that had been way simpler. For one thing, we didn’t need anything close to $50,000. For another, we were pitching to my parents. I couldn’t ask my parents for that kind of money even if I thought they had it, which I was pretty sure they didn’t.

Josh and I wrote pitch emails to every big company on the planet we thought might be interested in a doughnut business. I even wrote one to that guy who started Amazon. I knew it was a long shot, but I’d heard he was getting into food, and he seemed like someone who’d appreciate a good product even if it was made by a seventh grader. Josh had the idea to write to a couple of movie stars who’d grown up in upstate New York.

A month later, we were nowhere. With the exception of an actor I’d never heard of who was interested only if we put a picture of his face on our package—as if we even had a doughnut package—nobody even replied.

We had no idea what to try next, and we were fried. We were back at school, writing all these emails, making doughnuts, and running the shop. And since the Destination Eating article had come out, we were selling out faster than ever. I’d stopped looking at the comments on our website.

The only good news: Jim’s “Main Street Makeover” was really moving along. It wasn’t as if I thought people were going to vacation in Petersville just so they could get a haircut, watch a movie, and make a quilt all at once. But the Watch, Cut, and Quilt was way better than an empty shop, and definitely more unusual than a place where you could do just one of those things. Besides, people took road trips to see weird things all the time, right? Like to visit the world’s largest fish statue or that Eiffel Tower made of spaghetti. Maybe Petersville could become like one of those places.

The stores weren’t up and running yet. Volunteers were still cleaning out the buildings. It wasn’t just a question of sweeping and mopping. They were packed full of seriously old stuff, like many, many unopened boxes of something called “The Baby Alice Thumb Guard,” a device to keep kids from sucking their thumbs. From the picture, I’m pretty sure you’d be arrested today for putting one of those on your kids, so it’s not as if we could sell them on eBay or anything. Some stuff could be used, but most of it had to be hauled to the dump.

On a crazy hot Friday in May, after we’d sold out of doughnuts, Dr. C roped me and Josh into painting. Every building on Main Street was getting a new coat of paint, and judging from the colors Dr. C had chosen, he was definitely working the don’t-miss-a-visit-to-the-wackiest-small-town-on-earth angle. Each side of every building on Main Street would be painted a different color.