perfidy

I realized something today; there's a reason that people in New York and LA think everyone in the middle is crazy. It's because the only time that Beaufort, Montana or Monkeybutt Township, Tennessee makes the news, it's over something really messed up. Flood, famine, fire, bizarre hunting accident, massive KKK rally, or lurid murder plot. Usually the last of those.

Case in point: the place I'm from has made the news exactly once in the past decade, when a woman drowned her kids in a bathtub and maintained that the Lord commanded her to do it. In the past twenty-five years that count bumps to twice, when a budding serial killer was nabbed and identified as a resident. Also, two members of 80s hair-metal also-rans Warrant are from the next town over, so it might just be that I am from a cursed place.

An now my wife's hometown makes its own sad debut on the national stage. The very small, quiet, and lovely river town of Ford City, Pennsylvania is now in the news because some crazy evil woman tried to murder her neighbor and cut her unborn child out of her abdomen to keep as her own. And THIS after pretending to be pregnant right along with her neighbor for eight-odd months. The DA of Armstrong County, Pennsylvania was on the news this AM, and my wife upon seeing him said... "Holy crap... I went to school with his brother!"

And of course, since this story ended up on the national news, the damn fool crazy woman (who of course lives in a double-wide trailer) had to drive her unconscious prey all the way out to Rural Valley to do the baby-extraction part, and then managed to be discovered in flagrante by a kid out tooling around on his four-wheeler. There's a town out there called Rural Valley! Go a little way down 66 and US-422 and you'll also find Oil City, Coaltown, and Distant, Pennsylvania. This area is country.

S. We've got trailers, Rural Valley, a kid on his ATV. and a sensational murder plot that is like stinkbait for the rabid wombats of the national press. That's like some hideous perfect storm of unfortunate stereotypes to make it even easier for the stringers from the AP, Reuters, and CNN to play up (quite unfairly) just how gomerish the place is. Just Ford City's luck that it didn't make the news because the toilet factory opened back up, or for the fine exploits of NFL quarterback Gus Frerotte (who's from the neigboring Kittanning, but that's academic), but because some idiot damn-fool woman thought she could fool the world into thinking that it would be mere coincidence that her neighbor has disappeared and her new baby looks a lot like her.

But all's well that ends without disaster. The victim is alive and in the hospital and the baby is fine, and the crazy lady's husband is shocked and bewildered rather than complicit or room-temperature himself. I just wish for once places like where I'm from would make the news for good reasons. Puppies. Cotton candy. Children getting together and singing in a spirit of love and harmony. Something.

Jesus.