Handicapped Spaces in sorghum and maize in July

(Montrose) The estimated 300 rarely used handicapped parking spaces within the city of Montrose will be put to high yield agricultural use come spring, according to whomever thinks they are in charge here.

The spaces, designated over the past two years as open range since they are seldom occupied, have already been requisitioned and, like vacant lots, condemned due to public safety issues or labeled as property adjacent to larger municipal regions that is deemed necessary for expansion.

The targeted spots, spread all over the city, have been charted and plotted so as to insure uniformity in fertilizing and watering. Although sorghum can be a little testy when grown through asphalt, maize (corn) will grow in just about any conditions just as long as it gets enough sun and is protected from pests.

Due to federal auto-response overkill there are at least 500 handicapped parking spaces in the county, some located where no one has ever been, at least in a car. Some may even be suspended from space. As in most federal responses, the reality of the matter takes a back seat to bureaucracy.

Take the drunk driving laws for example.

A little known clause in the table of motor vehicle guidelines stipulates that drivers parked in handicapped spaces are immune to prosecution for impaired driving. (Check it out in the small print if you don’t believe us)

It is hard to say how many federal administrators draw a paycheck by monitoring and adjusting the number of handicapped spaces. It’s similar to counting trees or rocks than then going home for the day. At a time when the feds keep ranting about budget cuts this overpopulation and underemployment of restricted parking spots is ridiculous, according to officials here.

“We talk about multiple use and bounteous, exuberant, broad-minded agricultural concepts,”said a county commissar who continues to live in the 18th century. “It is high time to embrace farming techniques that produce results,” he said, hastily adding that he never used the word liberal in his compacted appraisal of the move.

“We want to make regulations too, like real cities do,” said a city councilperson who lives in the 19th Century. “People are then forced to obey our silly new laws and it makes us feel powerful and important.

“These underemployed spaces make our government look incompetent. They are a left-handed insult to the handicapped and cannot be considered green space since they are covered in asphalt,” he said. “This is liberal government at its finest hour.”

According to a survey conducted the nearby Bland Valley, which is blessed with even more of these unused parking spaces than Montrose, some 88% of the population admits that it often resents the handicapped when faced with lines of unoccupied handicapped spaces and no standard or regular spots in which to leave their car.

“The planting and sale of these commodities should soften the opinion of critics,” say the local leaders. Society can never have enough sorghum.” – H. L. Menoken

Town Excluded from Guide Books

Lonely Planet and three other popular backpacker guidebooks have failed to include Colona in their highlights of Colorado for the summer. The snub was not taken lightly by residents here who say that with the noted exception of lodging their town is just as good as Aspen or Vail.

It was not clear if the absence was intentional or simply an oversight but Colona fails to come up even in the index. The town has not been mentioned in any of the guides since about 1995.

“Then we must not exist, which is fine with me,” said one local entrepreneur. “They’ll either find us or they won’t.”

Many of the guide book shadow market do not even try to speak the local dialect and often can’t successfully cross the street without consulting their handy library of trekking bibles.

HELP! WE NEED HOUSING

Taxi Drivers Convention Taxes Services

Promoters of this year’s NewYork City Taxi Drivers Convention, slated for Colona in late September, say they still need volunteer housing for the over 100,000 expected delegates. Already some are set to bivouac at the school and a few will pull in trailers and tents but the situation is far from tranquil.

“We are about 95,000 accommodations short of our goal,” said one principle. “We’ve worked really hard to make the convention a success and to think that it all may fall through due to pillows is a difficult pill to swallow.”

Attempts to bed down the cabbies in the nearby Uncompahgre Natural Forest were thwarted by the USFS who insist that the large group will overwhelm existing services.

“What are these people to do? Bring in 50,000 port johns for the weekend?” said a local ranger. “The entire event has been poorly planned from the beginning. Next time they should consider holding the convention in a larger community like Ridgway or Norwood.”      – Uncle Pahgre

for related piece see Colona Roadhouse Seeks Identity

Colona Store Closing Day Care Wing

The Oberg Academy, a daycare center for unruly children will close its doors Friday. The beloved facility, which state officials say is too close to a liquor dispensary, has been a cornerstone of the community for decades. It is feared that the action will throw thousands out of work and destroy the region’s fragile economy. The abrupt termination of services hits particularly hard during the summer when marginal parents joyfully dropped off their charges and went back to bed.

“We will still maintain fishing excursions and the ski hill out back,” said head master and retired Marine, Harry Oberg. “I wonder if this will qualify us for federal subsidies under the cloak of alternate energy use, you know going and green and all,” he asked. “It’s already a lot more peaceful around here. We ought to get some kind of kickback for that alone. It was either the kids or the booze and I am confident we made the right choice,” he concluded.

Colona Airport Remodel Looks to the Future

(Log Hill Mesa) A new facelift will certainly hurl the Colona International Airport into the 21st Century in so far as accessibility and aerodynamics go, but detractors claim the modernization will give the facility an unfair edge.

Whether these critics are upset over the temporary cancellation of flights this summer or by the independent nature of Colonese businessmen is not clear. The airport is expected to reopen for business some time in September upon completion of the Space Odyssey Lieutenant Ohura Wing, designed to accommodate intergalactic traffic by Christmas.

Of the estimated 4.5 million spent already to upgrade runways and strengthen projections for space travel, 90% has come from private donations. This unlikely funding has put government and civic forces on their heels since they will have little to say about the basic orientation and daily function of the state-of-the-art airport.

The federal gov’ment, still stinging from the recent legalization of marijuana in Colorado, expressed concern that the facility will not pass stringent U.S. regulations and thus never reach full capacity as a standout in this solar system.

Developers of the airport had little comment saying only that they did not respond to bullies whether in the schoolyard or the courts. One of these suggested that if the gov’ment wanted a military base adjacent to Colona they had better “be nice”.

Besides the feds many local bureaucrats are miffed that they have been excluded from the planning and banned from the project site. The Montrose Developmentally De Facto Defalcation League has not only dropped the enterprise from its ostentatious summer brochure but has rejected Colona as a Partner in Progress for 2013.

“We remain in denial,” said the executive director of MDDFDL from her air-conditioned show barn on East Main. “It’s mean, just mean to ostracize us. We already have committees set up and  lots of meetings scheduled.”

Hang gliders and balloonists will not be affected by the temporary closures nor will red-eye security flights to Macondo, Tralfamadore or Freedonia.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                     – Tommy Middlefinger

COLONA SLIM SEZ: “I’m taking my Social Security check down to Montrose where I intend to drink it up.”

Local Border Collie Bound for Cambridge

Rusty moments after accepting the
Campbell Scholarship in Cork Friday

(Ridgway) A very intelligent border collie named Rusty has been awarded the prestigious (Leonard) Campbell Fellowship for study at Cambridge University near London. The grant/scholarship pays for every facet of the canine’s education including housing, food and materials with a monthly stipend of $600 for travel on the European continent. He is also recipient of the Phi Dog Phi Award for academic excellence and the Pavlov Prize for athleticism.

Rusty’s field of study/expertise will be Psycho-Primal Anthropology with emphasis on The Human Food Chain.

Although exhibiting some mixed feelings about leaving his fine life on the Haywire Ranch at Cow Creek, Rusty has accepted the offer to study abroad. He will finish the curriculum in three years and spend summers in Colorado. Upon graduation his options most likely run from a professorship to clinical research to herding livestock.

“He’s smarter than anyone in our family,” said Jed Pinwheel, Rusty’s sponsor and father figure. “That dog new how to count all of the chickens before and after they hatched. His hunger for knowledge put him paws and tails above the rest of the cow dogs around here. He was focused. That boy was always focused.”

Rusty, a eunuch in his own right, is not the first four-legged creature to attend Cambridge. A common British house cat, named Criseyde, with an IQ off the charts studied here in the 60s only to withdraw from classes due to an unexpected pregnancy. She currently lives in Cleveland.

Meanwhile back at the ranch cowboys scurry to find a replacement for Rusty.

“It will take three dogs to do the work of this guy,” said Colona Slim, a 112-year-old wrangler who’s still in the saddle. “Just as soon as he got them sheep or cows in a circle he’s commence to sticking his nose into a book. Smart sombitch.”

A going away party has been scheduled for Tuesday at Trail Town Distillery. No children please.

Dag Katz

Swimming Hippies Kill Fish At Festival

Special from The New York Times

     Hippies swimming the San Miguel River near Telluride were blamed today for the deaths of over 400 fish in what authorities are calling the strangest case on record. A music festival was in progress on the banks of the river and the festival is cited as a major reason for the hippies’ presence in the area.

     About two hours after the hippies finished bathing in the river fish began to float to the top, certifiably deceased. A group of about fifty hippies id wanted for questioning but none have been located. Although no motive has been discussed police intend to charge the swimming hippies with leaving the scene of a crime.

Ridgway Dam To Provide Water Mains For Valley

RIDGWAY UNDER WATER?

From The Ouray Herald     September 5, 1963

(Montrose) Tri-County Water Conservancy District Directors at a meeting last week gave final approval for the inclusion of 15,000 acre feet of storage for a domestic water supply in the proposed Dallas Creek Project at Ridgway.

According to local engineering firms this amount of storage will provide ample domestic water for rural, suburban and municipal use for the Uncompahgre Valley from the dam, just northeast of the flooded town of Ridgway, to the junction of the Gunnison River near Delta.

This includes the town of Olathe and the cities of Montrose and Delta, at their discretion, and provides for future growth and expansion of the entire area. A direct benefit of the proposed system would be the available resource of domestic water at a very economical rate.

The dam is currently under feasibility study by the Bureau of Land Reclamation. That study is scheduled to be completed by December.

The multi-purpose project wood provide storage for flood control, recreation, fishery, water quality control, municipal water and water for irrigation.

“Sometimes we have to flood a town or two yielding to the onward march of progress,” said a Tri-County spokesman.

Meanwhile residents of Ridgway watch and wait as the river is expected to rise any time now. Most have stopped mowing their lawns and painting their house opting to spend free time building arks.

Toole Wins Colombian Lottery

(Salento, Colombia) Transparent journalist Melvin Toole, who has been held captive in Colombian jungles since 2003, has reportedly won over 3,800,000,000 pesos (COP) in the Colombian Lottery. Toole has been working as a non-commissioned camp cook somewhere near the town of Mitu, having been abducted by an unidentified  revolutionary group after crashing his 1939 Henway Multi-Prop during a volcanic eruption on October 3.

Toole, third from left, with FARC in Putumayo near the Ecuadoran frontier in 2006.

Despite valiant attempts to convince the guerrillas that he was Che Guevara’s first cousin or, in one desperate case, to pass himself off as the reincarnation of Joseph Stalin, Toole was pressed into culinary service, chained to the cookstove.

Now it appears the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia will release its prisoner who has agreed to split the cash 50-50.

“Señor Toole has contributed a great deal of cash to our effort,” said a spokesman for FARC. “It’s too bad we are leaning hard across the peace table. That’s a lot of loot. Let’s hope we don’t have to return the money.”

FARC, which began as a guerrilla force intent on peasant land reform and redistribution of wealth, has in recent years become no more than a narco-terrorist group, wreaking havoc with the population and destroying the mountain and jungle environment with extensive cocaine processing plants. Millions of displaced campesinos now live in city slums due to violence perpetrated by FARC and Colombian right-wing militias, who have now surrendered their arsenals as part of the peace process.

The War on Drugs, sponsored by the United States has done little to eradicate coca since it is a high yield cash crop which is often the difference between a peasant family keeping its land or losing it to taxes or seizure by the militias employed by large land owners.

Toole will be released quickly since he must claim the prize in person in Bogota sans captors who are not invited to the ceremony. The winnings amount to about $2.3 million dollars. Attempts over the years to raise ransom money failed repeatedly although several friends have now come forward “offering Toole religious counseling, organic coffee or a ride into town”.

Known in Colorado as a combination Carlos Gardel-Mickey Mantle, the lean, sunburned journalist told reporters via the phone that he was damn lucky to win the money and that he had grown tired of gourmet cooking for beans and rice militants in the Amazon. He is scheduled to be airlifted out of Puerto Inrida on Friday.

One FARC soldier remembers the meals fondly.

“We will miss him,” said Sadie Martinez, a 18-year-old FARC recruit who befriended Toole over the years. “His fried three-toed sloth in corn glaze and mashed potatoes were, if you’ll pardon the expression, to die for, while his Guapi heart of palm goat pie was unbelievable, especially when one considers kitchen capacity and availability of exotic spices.

After paying off his hosts Toole plans to return to Colona and resume his duties as dog catcher by mid-May.

In another odd twist Syrian President Basher al-Assad has come forward to claim the Colorado Lottery which has risen to 1.4 million dollars. By virtue of economic sanctions imposed on Assad and his family he will not be able to collect at this time. Instead the money will be used for relief efforts in the war-torn country.

The FBI is currently investigating an alleged paper trail so as to determine who purchased the lottery ticket for Assad.

-Kashmir Horseshoe