Abandonned for lack of time: The articles here are unfinished but readable.
The Research Center's Regional Director G. Campbell, convicted before a rural Justice of the Peace of obstructing a public officer [DR#23], has lost his appeal to District Court. It is not clear to us why the appeal failed because we have never bothered to fully read and analyse the district judge's ruling. Any O.J. addicts needing their legal fix are free to review the ruling and full sequence of appeal briefing documents, but to us it is a dead cause. Campbell seems resolved to his fate as a convicted misdemeanor-er and has moved quickly to do his time at the Senior Center.
Campbell had been sentenced to five days community service working for the Rachel Senior Center. Because other local criminals had already been assigned there, the Center had no immediate need for physical labor. Instead, director E. Grover assigned Campbell the task of writing a short history of Rachel. There was something poetic in this sentence, we think. Campbell had been arrested for inappropriately defending the first amendment rights of a television news crew during a warrantless video tape seizure near Freedom Ridge. Sworn testimony clearly showed that Campbell said "there are unresolved issues here" and pushed down the door locks of the vehicle in which he and the crew had been travelling. It seems only right, then, that a first amendment criminal like he should be forced to engage in a first amendment punishment.
In early January, Campbell broke rocks by interviewing residents and reviewing references on the town's early history. Inexplicably, he spent close to ten days on the project, even though the extra time cannot be applied to his next crime. (And we know that there will be another one because those first amendment criminals never learn.)
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Rachel is the kind of place that you wouldn't think had any history as you scream past it at 70 mph, but just below the surface there are plenty of stories. Like anywhere else, you have people who are proud of their community and who want to remember their past. The history does not go back very far--to the mid 60s at most--but the simplicity of it is appealing in itself, and Campbell found more than enough to fill a book. He calls it a "Short History" to justify some editing so the document will be interesting to outsiders. Perhaps later some scholar can write the "Complete History," which might include the births and deaths of people's pets and the dates of power hookups, but the short version is at least a start.
Rachel TriviaIncluded in the Short History of Rachel is the background of each of Rachel's businesses--The Farm, The Ranch, The Mine, The Store, The Bar and The Research Center--from which we have drawn these interesting tidbits... Question: How many former owners and business names have there been for the Little A'Le'Inn? Answer: "The Bar," as it is known in town, had 10 owners in its 13-year history prior to the arrival of the aliens in 1989. The Bar was founded about the same time as the town, in the year 13 B.A.--"Before the Aliens"--or 1976. No one before the Travis's could make the business profitable, especially after The Mine closed in the mid-80s and over half of the population left town. Previous owners had tried six different names for this mobile-home establishment--Stagestop Saloon, Oasis Bar & Lounge, The Watering Hole, Club 111, G&M Bar & Grill and Rachel Bar & Grill. Most propriators folded in two years or less. Then the Travis's bought it, shrewd business people that they are, and they had a good feeling about the place from the very beginning. Sure, Bob Lazar and his claims may have eventually helped (definitely not Campbell!), but the aliens had blessed the Travis's even before that. As reported with surprising accuracy in the Weekly World News, the Inn has long been protected by an alien named Archibald, who once saved Pat's life, and the Travis's were visited by another otherworldly presence shortly after they bought the business. As the story is often told to visiting TV crews, Pat and Joe were sitting alone at the bar, nothing to do and no customers in the place, when this big ball of light came right through the solid metal back door. Pat and Joe sensed that it was an intelligent light, not any old ball lightning, and they invited it to sit down and open a beer. The rest, of course, is history, because it was not long after that the aliens sent Bob Lazar, as well as George Knapp to report on him on television, and the Rachel Bar & Grill became the center of the universe. |
An early draft of the Rachel history was circulated around the town for comments and corrections. "Book written with resentment and animosity," commented one resident of Lower Rachel, although no one from the Inn offered any specific corrections. The Rachel resident who seemed the most upset was C. Clark, who complained loudly to everyone in the Inn and said he would write to the Justice of the Peace and all the officials of Lincoln County to protest. Chuckie believed that Campbell had fun doing his community service, which is morally wrong. Chuckie said Campbell was supposed to do hard physical labor. Others in town thought Chuckie had no business worrying about Campbell's crime and punishment, but since his whole identity in Rachel is derived from Campbell, one cannot blame him for being concerned.
Final editorial control rested with Ms. Grover, a hot-seat position she had not been fully prepared for. She quickly discovered that there are many different views of history, and that if you censor everything that somebody isn't happy with, you end up with no history at all.
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Just please do not let yourself get into the nastiness of lawyerhood for too long. I think you have a better chance of making a real difference by finishing this legal crap and doing more of your Psychospy kind of reporting. Besides, I'm sure the investigative reporting stuff is much more fun and there is a lot more money in it if you play your cards right. Go for your own TV show!!!Campbell has once again resorted to terrorism against the local authorities in his new web area, Lincoln County Justice.
Henry is a rare animal: a reporter who never answers his own phone. He did not return Campbell's phone calls following the incident, even as he was telling other reporters that the seizure was illegal and that the station would fight it. (The station took no action, of course.) Despised by his collegues but popular with the viewers, Henry is known for his lightweight, cheap-shot stories in that local TV cesspool that is Los Angeles. The seizure of most of his video tape in no way hindered Henry's story on Area 51; he simply simply pasted together the footage of other stations and it ran as scheduled. Henry deserves a special place on our enemy list, maybe even higher than Sean Morton. Last we knew, he was the blow-dried meat puppet anchoring the early evening newscast on KNBC. He is, after all, an actor not a journalist.
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Created: 3/3/96
Revised: 3/13/96