Small Town Grievances 29: Fear! The Lake hog’s bite
Small Town Grievances 29: Fear! The lake hog’s bite
Town was featured by name in a big-city medical journal discussing our population’s notable immunity to common household viruses (flu, chickenpox), counterbalanced by an alarmingly high vulnerability to regional illnesses (tooth-squirt, euro foot, lake hog’s temper, pelvic mystery, the crusts). The hospital’s chief of medicine Edgar T. suggests both sides of this dichotomy may be linked to the enduring popularity of the pastime “poor lad’s Nintendo”, in which one spits into the air and catches it again in the mouth, repeating the process for many hours until a saliva bulb forms, heavy with small feathers and bark fragments and other natural detritus. Town hall put out a request for anybody with a copy of the article to fax it through unless it contains words of cruelty about Mayor’s extraordinary forehead.
Town mourns this season’s demised pets: Karl the dachshund, who treated none with kindness; Honey the rabbit, who was fed raw meat as an experiment and went insane on the interstate. We are again reminded that the mortuary can, for a monthly fee, keep any late pets on ice until we are ready to be buried with them, as long as we don’t mind them being frozen beyond mortal recognition and likely stinking of a chemical used to clean the outside of ships.
Major disruption at town meeting as cranky sports fans stormed the podium to call for a referendum addressing the town’s draconian sporting regulations. Town charter has long ruled that rosters for any organised sports are set for life, and that vacant positions are to be reserved for those babies born at the time closest to the death of the vacating player. The bulk of our best players are weak and resentful, having had no opportunity to make their fortunes elsewhere. Those who are cognitively able to adapt to modern strategies are usually unwilling. The big school’s lacrosse team is full of septuagenarians made to look constantly foolish by the cruel young bucks of Hindenberg Secondary — all of whom are selectively drawn from the generations most positively affected by Hindenberg’s famous chemical spills, with super-active malice glands and that muscle condition that gives dogs the appearance of furniture removalists. Sport is a charged subject for our town. Many are still emotional about the episode several years ago in which four separate busloads of our best and most ancient junior-league footballers fell victim to one of the town’s ultra-sinkholes and were accidentally paved over by near-sighted road workers, in what the paper called “one of the year’s most avoidable sports tragedies”.
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More of this mess at jackvening.net