As if things could get any worse in the self-imposed nightmare that is Lamont's irrational competition with the surprisingly humble city of Long Beach, WA; one of the best managed and most beautifully located small communities in the State; the Town of Lamont was rocked back on their heels when some enterprising know-it-all (foreign language nerd!) pointed out the meaning of 'Lamont' in that highly suspect and 'commie-loving' language, French, (does anyone still speak that vanquished tongue?) while the City of Long Beach not only uses good old English but the town name they chose also perfectly describes their geographic peculiarities. "Oh, you have got to be kidding me!" stammered the language-challenged Mayor after looking in an English/French dictionary to be certain that no one was pulling his dadburn leg. "What were our Town Fathers thinking? We are dozens of miles from what might be even remotely called 'a mountain' - and those gently sloping dirt piles that border the Town certainly don't qualify as any self-respecting mountain anyone ever heard tale of! Oh, is every aspect of our historic existence somehow laced with fraud, falsehood and deception? Oh, I just hope that that doggone City of Long Beach doesn't hear about this! Of course that goodie-two-shoes civil incorporation does indeed sport the longest beach in the whole doggone world - darn their eyes! At least Lamont could have a Mount McKinley or maybe even a 'K-2' if they are going to go naming the whole dern town after a thing. Is nothing as it seems to be in the 2nd smallest Town in the State? What other base assumptions, taken for granted for 100 years, will come crashing down around our ears when we least expect it? Sure, naming any town "Gently Sloping Dirt Mound' is not very graceful and does not tend to roll off the tongue, but at least there is a whiff of honesty in that name. And why did they have to pick an attribute so easily disproved like the presence or absence of some huge geological (and thus geographical) manifestation made from solid rock that people can see at a glance from any number of miles away?" he sniveled. "At least when people go to visit that doggone Long Beach, they can look around and say 'Yep, that is a really, really long beach, now let's go get some fresh seafood at a really quaint restaurant' - but when they come to Lamont looking for alpine skiing, exhilarating hang gliding or that totally irrational mountain climbing, all they can do is just wander away feeling cheated and somehow abused and we don't even have a public restroom for their convenience! All I can say is 'darn their eyes' to both our verbally challenged (or down right shifty!) founding fathers and that overly precise, smarty-pants, too-good-by-half (yet appropriately named!) City of Long Beach! Maybe our picking a fight with them was not such a good idea, after all! What the heck was I thinking?" he mumbled while dispiritedly shuffling back to the Town Hall that doesn't even have a bathroom.(Editorial Note: Any rumors to the effect that Lamont was actually named after the son from the hit TV show "Sanford and Son" are purely speculative and without any known historical merit and/or foundation - given that Lamont was incorporated in 1910 and one of the greatest, most hilarious (yet socially instructive!) TV shows of all time came any number of decades later. This supposed TV-related naming rationale is preferable, however, to the shockingly mind-boggling reality of naming a new town after a mountain that does not in fact exist!)
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