CSotD: And with one swipe …

Mike Peterson Published: August 12, 2011 1 minute 4 comments

Strangebrew
Okay, today's choice is largely an accident of timing, but I like the blandness of John Deering's art in this Strange Brew. Sometimes, you can just draw something and, if you do it right, you don't need a pie-in-the-face punchline to make it "funny."

But the timing of this funny panel also happens to be impeccable, because I'm headed to a kind of homecoming at my old school, and I probably won't have any wi-fi or even cell phone coverage for much of the weekend.

I was the Census reporter at the paper where I was working back in 1990, so I paid particular attention to coverage of the topic, and that led me to one of my favorite bits of transparent journalism. The New York Times had an article on Speculator, which, the Census revealed, was the smallest town in New York State.

Speculator is not just in the Adirondacks but is smack in the middle of what even the locals consider nowhere.

And, in his story, the reporter described the place as "so remote it doesn't even have an ATM," and I laughed aloud, as I wondered without much mystery how Jimmy Olsen had come up with that description. It still makes me chuckle.

I hoped he had a checkbook with him, because it's a hospitable place and somebody would surely cash a check for him, but otherwise he was gonna be pretty much out of luck because, no, there were no ATMs in most of that forever-wild state park where the folks who live there and want to do things like put up a garage next to their house are in a constant regulatory struggle with the city folks who want it to remain pristine wilderness, except when they show up short of cash or when their car blows a water pump or when they discover that the motel doesn't have 200 cable channels and a four-star restaurant attached.

Two decades later, there are a fair number of ATMs up there. There's at least two in my home town, and I'll bet there's one in Speculator, too. But I'm taking more cash with me than I would normally carry because I'm not a damn fool. And, though I left rural Maine nearly three years ago, I still bank at Bangor Savings because they rebate ATM fees.

Even way out in the middle of nowhere, which, by the way, is heaven this time of year.

Winslow-Homer-The-Nooning-25413

Comments ⁴

Dave in Philadelphia

Enjoy yourself and refresh. A progressive in Utah … you need it.
Your last two posts (before this one) were so on point … and sad. Yes, Michelle Bachmann should be a laughing stock, and she is not. As should Rick Perry. But, he is not.
I am old enough to have watched the George McGovern debacle. Maybe this will be the Republican’s version of November ’72.

hildigunnur

I loved this one too: http://www.rhymeswithorange.com/2011/08/august-06-2011/

Mark Jackson

My first thought was “how did the bear [market] find an ATM connected directly to my IRA?”

Mike Peterson

RWO is so often great that it has gone past “I have to remember not to use this too often” to “I have to remember not to try to avoid using it too often that I don’t use it at all.”
She’s a pip.

Comments are closed.