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HIGH POINT - On the corner of Gary Simon's desk, below the artwork from his 5-year-old son, sits a small statue of Don Quixote.

Now, think back to your high school English class - when you didn't go to sleep.

Quixote, one of literature's greatest characters, was a bit daffy. He fought windmills, rode a skinny horse and promised his round-faced friend he could govern an imaginary island.

Yet, there he is, on the corner of Simon's desk, a sway-backed knight with the Yiddish word for guts hanging from a chain around his neck.

The word? Chutzpah.

Simon likes that statue and that word. And he likes to think about the Don Quixote in him and the need for the Don Quixote in all of us - particularly in this economy.

"I'll look across the street and see someone selling pickup trucks," Simon says. "But if I look hard enough and bob my head, I think I'm on Fifth Avenue ... and think, 'Hey, this'll work.'"

But will it?

First, look at Simon. He's 52, married, a second-generation jeweler. He's rooted deep in High Point, gives to charity and the arts, and he's become the well-dressed example for small-business chutzpah.

There's that word again.

Simon has sold jewelry in High Point for 21 years. For the past 11 years, he's sold jewelry at Lexington and North Main, looking out of place among blue-collar businesses selling cars, hamburgers, barbecue and beer.

But Simon sits at the future epicenter for High Point's new downtown - Lexington and North Main, one of the city's busiest intersections - and that spot could become as picturesque as anything anywhere on Main Street U.S.A.

The plan: Plant trees, erect ornamental street lights, landscape street medians and narrow to two lanes a four-lane road that's seen as one of the widest Main Streets in North Carolina.

And Simon believes that'll happen. Last fall, he spent nearly $600,000 to enlarge his store and make it easy on the eyes, where everything is circled and curved.

But times are tough. Friday, according to the Department of Labor, the country's unemployment rate rose to its highest level in 15 years - 6.7 percent - as employers slashed 533,000 jobs in November.

And not everything is hunky- dory off North Main. Simon, a boss to 10 employees, says his business is off by 10 percent.

But he believes Simon Jewelers can weather any recession. He's in the business of making memories because he helps people mark birthdays, anniversaries, graduations and holidays.

And that, he says, won't go away. But will the concrete and steel busyness of North Main?

Maybe.

High Pointers have ramped up their discussions about a proposed redevelopment plan that could reinvent Furniture City.

It'll be a tough sell. It'll take time and lots of money. But High Point is the only city in America whose entire downtown is devoted to a furniture trade show that brings in nearly 50,000 buyers from around the world twice a year.

In between, downtown is desolate. So, the High Point Market is a blessing - and a curse.

Ask any urban planner, and they'll talk about how the quality of life in any city is about geography, about having a place to congregate, to conduct business, to socialize.

And that's where Simon Jewelers comes in. And Gary Simon. And the need to find the Don Quixote in all of us.

At least at times.

"The world isn't flat, we're not Columbus and our ship is not going to go over the side,'' Simon says. "There are real people with real problems, and people have lost their jobs. But we're not there, wherever there is. The sky is not falling. Sure, it's pretty bad right now. But it'll all level out.''

Contact Jeri Rowe at 373-7374 or jeri.rowe@news-record.com