Humbled Mayor Appreciates Town Even More After Spending 4 Hours In Spokane Emergency Waiting Room

In a classic example of the grass not always being greener on the other side, a local Mayor was able to put the more troublesome elements of the 2nd smallest Town in the State into a more refined perspective after spending a few short hours (that seemed more like 30!) waiting on a friend in a busy Spokane area emergency room sitting area. "Oh, I'll never complain about Lamont again!" bellowed the shamefaced Mayor a tad too optimistically, unfortunately! "It is so easy to sometimes see the town in a less than flattering context when the 'squeaky wheel' principle is in full form, but I tell you what, the biggest pain in the tushy in Lamont is nothing compared to the average person I saw come in off the streets of Spokane for various forms of medical care. Good gravy, man!!! Oh, we are so blessed here! I take it all back! I was a fool! There's no place like home, I say!"

"Oh, it was almost beyond words! Although the professional staff more than had their hands full on almost every conceivable level, just the sheer number of body piercings alone, if melted down, could provide Lamont with their own full-sized Statue of Liberty, for Pete's sake! And all that openness about flagrant drug addictions and various anti-social behaviors being broadcast to broken-hearted mothers via the worst invention in the history of mankind - the doggone cell phone - was enough to break the hardest heart into atom-sized pieces! (as were the clearly audible sobs of remorse and longing coming back thru the airwaves from the far flung, seemingly helpless mothers, wherever they were!) It was all very humbling! These are Americans - fellow human beings like us - many of whom are broken and lost and forgotten and without hope. (But for the Grace.....!) It put a whole new spin on the Lord's words to love your neighbor as yourself... One's neighborly shortcomings very quickly become apparent in a place like that - where the veneer of human nicety is laid aside for the expediency of the all too common currency of basic human weakness and survival - come what may."

"I must admit, it made me realize just how short I fall as a fully engaged human being! What an emotional miser I have become - dispensing empathy and human understanding as if with an eye-dropper - a truly modern man, indeed! What a devastating reality check! How this must sadden my Maker who, in spirit, I resemble not at all! Whoa! In those few short hours I saw more human suffering and misery, not including the medical ailments that brought them there in the first place, than Lamont has produced in the 100 years since our founding! So, let us just say I was more than a little pleased when we turned off of SR 23 onto Lamont Road and saw the loving glow of the 2nd smallest Town in the State. Sometimes beauty is only truly revealed when compared against something much less so! And personal short-comings are often only truly exposed against an abundance of opportunity lost!" he said before shamefully slinking off to re-read the Sermon On The Mount - hopefully to absorb its obvious import this time around! (talk about a slow learner!)