Crossroads

It's 1914 at the Potter home in the rural community of Crossroads, which serves as family residence, doctor's office, boarding house, and telephone exchange. For Grandpa, a crusty, retired hellfire-and-brimstone minister; his daughter Miss Eva, widow of a country doctor (and practicing medicine without a license); Eva's imaginative and restless teenage daughter Nell; handyman Lomax; and schoolteacher/switchboard operator Lavinia, life is pretty humdrum-that is, until a train derails just outside of town. News comes fast and furiously through the telephone exchange. Neighbors call to report buffaloes in their cornfields, African chieftains stalking through their yards, and cowboys and Indians roaming the neighborhood. And then comes word that the train was carrying Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. As the household works itself into a tizzy, a refugee from the wreck shows up-assumed at first to be Buffalo Bill himself. Instead, he turns out to be a cowboy/musician with the unlikely name of Fargo Montana, who dresses in costume for his role as Buffalo Bill's stand-in. The folks in the Potter home are disappointed that their guest isn't the celebrity they thought, but they soon find that Fargo's presence forces them to confront their long-held dreams-Nell to live in the city, Eva to go to medical school, Grandpa to become a Wild West cowboy, Lavinia to find the man of her dreams, and Lomax to return to his roots in show business. Fargo has a dream, too-to start a jazz band. Fargo and Lavinia fall in love in a song, and as the curtain falls, everyone is setting out on bold new ventures.