Have you noticed Judy Norvell’s new dress?

She used to be in a blouse and skirt.

Not now.

Now she fairly glistens, there on the right in Salisbury’s historical mural that faces the Wachovia Bank parking lot on West Fisher Street. She’s got gold flowers on her brown hat, and she’s wearing a dress that’s a cross between gold and russet, and it is pretty, just real pretty, say the folks who pass and stop to look and admire how nice and bright the mural looks now.

Look there at the big, fancy collar on Coco Murphy. And at Sylvia Wiseman’s vibrant orange dress.

Why, even the trolley shines. By the time artist Cyndy Arthur-Rankin packs up her paints tonight — it’ll be close to dark for sure — and gets the scaffold ready to be picked up tomorrow morning and waves goodbye to the mural and Salisbury, that trolley will probably have its real number painted right on both sides the way it was when the trolley took picnickers out to the park at the end of Fulton Street. Not 57 like it’s been painted these 20 years since Cyndy put the mural on the wall. Now the trolley is No. 81.

Does that really matter, considering so much of the mural is a blend of fact and fiction?

Not really, but Cyndy thinks it’s fun to get it right when she can.

Like those new dresses.

Rowan Public Library did a little costume research for her and she had pictures of dresses at the turn-of-the-century to put on the people of the mural. The last turn-of-the-century, of course. Not now.

But the awnings at the Meroney Theatre?

They’re now.

Burgundy, like they really are on the restored Meroney just a block or so away on Main Street. Cyndy took a little walk and looked, and the result is a deep, rich burgundy that looks alive.

In fact, that’s the word for the whole mural.

Alive.

And Cyndy is happy at last with the way it’s looking after years of struggle to fight the ravages of weather and time. If a few things still need to be done, well, that’s the way art is, isn’t it? Never quite finished. Always a promise of tomorrow. With everything a little out of place where history is concerned but exactly where it ought to be for the feel of changing yesterdays instead of a single moment fixed in time.

The Grubb Building that’s the Plaza now is right behind the Mansion House when truth is it replaced the Mansion House on the Square when that burned early in this century.

And it’s next door to the county office building that used to be the old post office a block away, and it’s all a little mixed up like memory itself because Cyndy wants to get it all in. The people and the places and the streets and the buggy and the ice wagon and the dogs that were here once upon a time and came back to life 20 years ago when Cyndy climbed the first scaffold with her paints and her brushes and her excitement about a historic Salisbury mural.

But it’s been a job to keep it from fading away.

Cyndy no longer lives in Salisbury, and she’s had trouble getting a block of time long enough to meet the mural’s needs because she manages her husband Mike’s law office in Shadyside, Md. And the weather has to be right.

But this time everything’s gone perfectly since she got here in mid-July. Oh, it’s been hot, but heat doesn’t bother Cyndy. Maybe it helps the paints flow smoothly because all those buildings — the community building that’s now the Rowan Museum and the old Wachovia Bank building with its onion dome where the city offices now are and the Bell Block — are freshly painted and beckoning you to stop and look a while.

Bruce Lefler, the retired stonemason who’s helped her in the past, has been there every day to help for a few hours. Diane Overcash, a retired school art teacher, has helped. And Janie Allen, generally considered the mother of the mural, has been painting herself, under Cyndy’s direction, of course.

And they’re not everybody, Janie exults.

“Happily,” she says, “we found Mary Earle Kluttz to help her.”

And her help was more than just a few weeks this summer. Her help carries promise for the future.

The daughter of George Kluttz and former Salisbury Mayor Margaret Kluttz, Earle “is truly interested in Salisbury,” Janie says. “She came and just applied herself to it, and they worked so well together. Cyndy’s tried out other artists before because we don’t all paint the same way, and mural painting is very, very different.”

But Earle is special because she’s been working with Michael Brown, a painter from the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area, helping him with murals in Virginia, West Virginia and North Carolina.

“And she was so thrilled for the opportunity to work with Cyndy,” her mother says. Interested in art since she was a tiny child, she’s just left for Florence, Italy, where she’ll complete her last semester for an AB degree in art from the University of North Carolina.

Being a resident of Salisbury probably made her appreciate the history of the town and the story the mural tells, very much like Cyndy Arthur herself does, Margaret Kluttz says.

And she’s interested in the mural’s future preservation, says adds Janie Allen, like Cyndy, who will never lose interest. Even today, putting on the final brush strokes, she’s already talking about coming back because she’s thought of people she wants to add. And she’d like to extend the sky and a few more clouds around to the back of the building.

So Salisbury’s historic mural isn’t finished and probably never will be.

Just the other day, Janie Allen says, she was busy painting when a woman and her son stopped to talk as people often do while artists work.

She said she and her son had talked about the mural, Janie says, and decided it must stay forever.

“Forever,” Janie repeats with emphasis.