The lowly and largely misunderstood Town of Lamont, known for miles around as the town that cannot, even under the most decidedly favorable conditions, grab its own rear-end with both hands, has thrown convention onto the manure pile and is attempting to do what is known in the 'outside world' as a bit of branding - a marketing term that has something to do with institutions or products or something like that. (Hey, how can branding not be associated with cows? That just seems crazy to me!) The lowly Lamont, known until recent years as the town without houseplants given the formerly outrageously bad state of the town water system after decades of neglect and inaction (Thank you USDA and CBDG and Century West Engineering for helping us rectify this situation!!) has decided that it needs a new slogan - a new moniker, if you will, to help capture the current unsettling energy and verve that seems to be gripping the town by the throat in the last few, quite painful years. "Well, nothing pains us more as a town than positive change, (The negative kind seems okay, however!) but it is high time that the town dust off its tarnished and largely disreputable (yet well-deserved!) past and take several teetering baby steps towards the modern era, for Pete's sake!!" said an area mayor with more than a dash of cringing fear and trepidation. "Sure, that whole unfortunate houseplant reputation thing was a little embarrassing, and, sure, since our founding in 1910 we have been affectionately known across the Palouse as the epicenter of pungent and often overwhelming halitosis, (not to mention those other unfortunate, largely bovine-related odors! Whoa!!) but we need to update our decidedly well-deserved image to embrace the future, however unsettling and unnerving that may seem!" he said with far less enthusiasm than is normally shown by even an innocent man being unceremoniously frog-marched thru the snow to the waiting gallows. "So, our new town slogan "Lamont - Where Fair To Middling Is The Best We Can Ever Hope For!" seems to capture some of the new hope and possibility that Lamont is trying to parley into new residents and maybe even a single, solitary store or coffee shop or whatever!" he rambled on annoyingly - never being one to shy away from aspiring to even the most unreachable of pipe dreams (Come on! Lamont with a store? How insane is that?) or clinging desperately to the most ridiculous and far-fetched of forlorn hopes!"Well, given that Lamont is the town that never quite managed to paint their one, single, solitary building - the Fire Station/Town Hall in 60+ years, it goes without saying that running around changing things and improving stuff before it just collapses into a heap of smoldering ruin runs counter to the prevailing farm wisdom for miles around - so this bold, brave step into that whole 're-branding' thing is bound to be as unpopular as all of the other 'big city' things we have done in the last few years, but maybe it is time for people to begin to quit clinging onto a failed and dismal past that somehow catapulted us into the quite unenviable position as the 2nd smallest town in the State!" he blathered on endlessly as he tends to do when anyone, however remote, seems to be paying even a modicum of attention to him. "I mean, we are still facing a simmering citizen revolt from when we instituted a new, largely tooth-less dog ordinance several years back because some people think it is their God-given right to let their animals attack school children walking to school (some of them thought this way, anyway!) - and naturally we still have any number of people who won't walk on the new sidewalks (Thank you Greg Partch and the TIB!! Our new roads are beautiful!) because they preferred the dusty, unreliable gravel roads and view their embarrassing, archaic, illogical behavior as some gallant form of civic protest akin to flying the flag at half mast in moments of national tragedy or grief (ironically, the biting dog people and the sidewalk people tend to come from the same families! Go figure!!) - oh yeah, and don't forget those folks who don't want a new library because all that fancy book learning, as everyone knows, is a razor-sharp arrow in the devil's quiver - but still we must move on - however tentatively and reluctantly this advancement may appear to others!" he gushed fearfully, glancing about as if expecting some piano or anvil or whatever to come tumbling out of the sky onto his somewhat thinning hair/head! (Yes, the cartoon "The Roadrunner" is now the official Town cartoon - having replaced "Scooby-Doo" just last year in another one of those controversial mayoral initiatives to help modernize the place!)
(Editorial Note: This new Lamont motto, although falsely modest and largely discombobulated like everything that Lamont does, is still vastly inferior to that doggone Long Beach's motto, that rambles on about being a really fun place to live and vacation - and something about having stores or whatever! That is just like them! Having to have some logical, contextually accurate, easy to remember motto that is much more enjoyable to read than the Lamont motto. Darn their beady little eyes - and their stupid motto, too. That is all we have to say on the matter! Thank you!)
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