Art Boutain – Loyal Lamont Grain Grower’s Employee Or International Man Of Mystery?

The Town of Lamont was stunned to learn that Art Boutain was an actual person and not just some legend or myth maintained in our popular culture by a media machine hell-bent on creating archetypal figures to fill our popular imaginations in order to sell action figures and video games to millions of young people looking for heroic role models to fill their empty, meaning-starved lives. “Well, I got a call to come over to the Grain Growers for some reason, and as I made my way towards their door, without a care in the world, all of a sudden this man came up to me, shook my hand and introduced himself as ‘Art Boutain’” said the still stunned and skeptical mayor. “I must have just stared at him with open-mouthed disbelief because he immediately followed up with ‘No, really, I am Art Boutain’.”

“Well, being the Mayor of a small town in Eastern Washington has its share of unique and decidedly mind-boggling moments, so I am usually prepared for just about anything that pops out of the bushes at me – like the time that Councilman got attacked by that nest of crazed wiener dogs – but coming to the realization, after all this time, that this illusive and obviously discrete character was really flesh and bones and not some imaginary creation like an Indiana Jones or Luke Skywalker or whatever was a little much to digest” he said. “I mean, I had met his ‘wife’ – or the woman who said she was married to “Art Boutain” at one of the Lamont Movie Nights – but just because a person says something like that does not mean that it is true or that her supposed ‘spouse’ is even a real person. There are a lot of people who have claimed to have seen “Bigfoot” too, but that does not mean that a big, hairy, North American man-ape lives in the forests of Northern California, does it? So as I inched my way cautiously towards the Grain Grower’s door, every nerve poised for a dramatic ‘fight or flight’ response’ in case this man calling himself 'Art Boutain' made any sudden, hostile moves, when all of a sudden that pillar of productivity and town go-getter Ron Dixon came around the corner and said “Are you ready to go, Art?”. Although he did not actually use the whole name “Art Boutain” – that was enough to convince me that this man, long rumored to exist but forever lurking in the shadows like some grain-growing “Invisible Man” might, indeed, be a real person. I just wish I would have thought to ask for several forms of ID, but I was too stunned to follow that evidentiary rabbit trail to its logical conclusion.”