In a rare 'near miss' that has US State Department officials laying back on their government issue sofas with an ice pack on their collective foreheads, almost 200 years of excellent US/British cultural and diplomatic relations darn near went down the "Water Closet" after a vacationing British couple somehow became disoriented while traversing the somewhat confusing road network in the Palouse and quite unfortunately ended up in the 2nd smallest town in the State. This wayward couple from the British Isles, (wherever they are!) Manford and Hilda Rumpole, both aged 73, now undergoing counseling for PTSD, were on an extended vacation in the States, taking advantage of the quite attractive dollar/pound exchange rate and surveying just how far one of the colonies could manage to get off track after that unfortunate little misunderstanding back in the 1770's. Anyway, this luckless couple somehow took a right when they should have taken a left down by Ewan and before they knew it they were transported back in time to a place that, although giving off the outward appearance of having a western, Anglo-Saxon veneer, was somehow just very, very wrong and outside the scope of the experiences of the decidedly tolerant and well-traveled globe trotters."Well, I darn near fell off the twig when it became obvious that my Manford had bollixed up the driving again and we pulled off Highway 23 into what for all appearances was a cute little hamlet or village or whatever. Anyway, as we motored into the heart of this little outpost on the prairie, I immediately told my husband of 46 years to roll up the blasted windows. And that cursed man had the nerve to say "in for a penny, in for a pound' and just drove right into the center of town to ask for directions! I could have just pinched his head off right then and there! Oh, one could not help but draw parallels to that classic movie "Village of the Damned" although there wasn't in fact of bunch of creepy blonde identical twins running about the place. But those cold, weary stares from the locals, I believe they call it "the stink eye" were enough to give one the creeps!" she stammered, obviously showing signs of moderate sedation. "And as if that wasn't bad enough, when we attempted to parley with the motley assemblage that just seemed to materialize around our motor car, that is when I knew for sure that we were indeed in a place completely outside the scope of the British Empire, let me tell you! And my poor husband, nervous at the best of times, didn't help matters by muttering something about pudding. Pudding!!! That certainly helped escalate an already tense and awkward situation into one with decidedly ominous dimensions. How were we to know that American pudding was markedly different from English pudding, for the Queen's sake? That little informational item was in none of our travel brochures!" she stammered pathetically.
"Well, we saw this weird foreign car dare to venture down Main Street (any car or truck not from the Greater Lamont Metropolitan Area (GLMA) is by definition considered "foreign', regardless of its country of manufacture) and the people inside obviously didn't cut their own hair, so we knew immediately that them was foreigners and that there might be trouble" said Jed Snopes, 56, an area rancher and acting President of the "Lamont for Lamonters (and the surrounding area!)" a historical society dead set against any changes and improvements of any kind. "And as if on some unspoken cue, dozens of Lamonters (or are they in fact 'Lamontazoids'?) and their rancher neighbors from miles around just seemed to boil out of their houses in order to get a better look at them people and to see what was going on. (word travels fast in these parts!) And that guy driving, obviously not a cow owner, began mumbling something about 'a spot of pudding', but any dern fool knows that them English types make pudding out of all kinds of things that Bill Cosby would not approve of - like blood and who knows what else! They sure as heck weren't talking about tapioca or vanilla or even that overrated chocolate pudding, that is for sure! That is when we knew that these strangers had every intention of undermining our very way of life itself! Oh, the nerve of them people. Finally, that woman who was with him, the one wearing all them fancy, color-coordinated, store-bought clothes, managed to gurgle out something about getting to Colfax, and Scooter Bodine, the town's resident scholar and the only guy who has ever watched PBS on the TV was able to quite imperfectly translate whatever language it was that they were speaking and we pointed them on their merry way - a gesture that they were not slow in heeding. Their departure was none-too-soon for us, let me assure you!" he said wearily. "When will them dern outsiders realize that Lamont and the surrounding area don't want none of them 'big city ways' from the good old USA, and we dern sure ain't open to a bunch of fancy pants ideas from some foreign country that doesn't even use the dollar as their dadburn money, for Pete's sake! People just need to let us be! Let them go over there to Long Beach if they want some fancy cosmopolitan experience that the average person would think is normal! And it is just un-American to go messing with a perfectly good dessert that everyone knows should be sweet, creamy and comes in little plastic containers right from the grocery store!" he rambled disjointedly! "That just goes to show that them foreigners can goof up just about anything and thus can't be trusted!"
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