Tabatha Deans

Meeting the town crazies

This has been the week that I’ve met many of the town crazy people. The first, I’ll call LG, I met when I went to cover a cute story about a woman and her horse barn. It wasn’t much of a story, and I hoped for some good pictures of people riding horses. I met with the woman and her boyfriend, LG. They both said I could do the story, but were concerned about the city getting the wrong idea that they were making money by renting out their horse arena for a profit. I assured them I wanted only to do a cute story about horse people helping other horse people. LG left to run an errand and sent me into the barn wtih his girlfriend to take photos.

I conducted the interview with the girlfriend, and was shooting photos, when she returned and said LG had some concerns he wanted to discuss with me. I said that was fine, I’d wait for him. He showed up about five minutes later in a complete tirade. (Again, after he had told me it was okay to do the story.) He ranted about getting in trouble and I said, “well, if you don’t want me to do the story, that’s fine. Just tell me and I’ll leave.” He raised his voice and shook his head and said “no story! No story!.” I said “Not a problem, I’ll kill it,” and started putting my camera away. LG took a couple steps closer and said “Don’t make me sue you! I’ll sue you if I have to.” Taken aback and a little upset myself, I said, “I assure you, no story will ever appear about this place under my byline.” He went on to talk about suing me a little more, and I finally told him, “Look, I was told it might be a cute human interest story, but there’s certainly real news stories I can go cover. There’s no need for this story, so I’m killing it right now.”

He went silent while I packed up my notebook and camera, but kept giving me the evil eye. As I was leaving, mainly in a gesture to “Poke the bear,” I extended my hand and said, “thanks for your time, and just so you know, I cover real news stories as well, so if you ever have any concerns or community issues you would like addressed, don’t hesitate to call me.” This almost knocked him off his feet. He immediately settled down and confided in me that he thought the county had talked my editor into sending me to find out about his barn, with the threats of rezoning his property to commercial and charging him more taxes. I assured him I wasn’t part of a conspiracy, and if he ever felt the need to sue anybody to call my editor. I also assured him that there would NEVER be any coverage of ANY event that took place at his barn.

Later that night I was having dinner at the Luck household, BArbara and Leroy were digging a trench on their property, so the whole family gathered to watch the trenching with the trenching tool. While we ate I relayed my experience to them, which they promptly laughed at. “LG is a nut. He comes into the shop on a regular basis threatening to have Leroy and Roger sent to jail because he thinks they shot a deer on his property last hunting season.” They also confirmed that two of the school board members I’ve had bad feelings about are indeed questionable, as well as several law enforcement officials. So I’m getting a pretty good idea of who the nutjobs, at least the nutjobs in positions of authority, are in this town.

August 27, 2008 - Posted by Tabatha Stewart | Uncategorized