This Week in Hammertown #3
It's Thursday, May 8, 2025, day 234 of Huff 2.
City Council president Seth Roberson traveled to neighboring Parker’s Hollow on Thursday to scout possible locations for a satellite City Hall. Following Mayor Huffman’s recent announcement, Parker’s Hollow is a target for annexation by Hammertown sometime in the next year. “He wants to do what now?” a puzzled Parker’s Hollow official told the Waukachuk Press. “But we’re like — a whole separate town. We have our own rules and laws and everything. We have our own post office. Look, you can see it from here. He wants to… Wait. What is it he wants to do?” Standing in a field by Rte. 147, Roberson told a sparse crowd of citizens, most of whom seemed to have stopped to see what the fuss was about while on their way to the mall: “You’re gonna love it. It’s what you’ve always wanted.” Later, on the way back into Hammertown, Roberson stopped to inspect First Lady Lana DeLoof Huffman’s latest community beautification project, a lushly replanted median strip along Haskins Boulevard. “You can’t put a price tag on beauty,” Roberson said, “although if you could, the $17.3 million we’re spending to improve this two-block section of our First Lady’s daily route from her condo to her tennis club would be a bargain. And the prisoners really seem to enjoy getting out in the sun and putting in those Brazilian Rosewood planter boxes. It’s win/win!” After visiting for a few moments with the laborers — “So,” he was heard asking a large gentleman with a neck tattoo, “how you likin’ that post-hole digger?” — he told reporters: “This is the kind of project I’m proud to support under our great mayor. And it lays down a marker for continued growth into a bright future, even after this administration steps aside. Whoever the mayor may be then. I’m just happy to have a small part. Whatever I may do in the future. But not for years. Someday, though. Maybe.” He then laughed awkwardly for 30 seconds, was greeted by silence from baffled onlookers, got back in his car and was driven away.
Elsewhere in Hammertown this week, 2016 mayoral candidate Laurene Gaspar emerged from a period of seclusion to visit the Hobby Lobby just outside of town. Pressed by reporters for a statement, Ms. Gaspar took a long pull from a Nalgene full of an unidentified clear liquid and shouted across the parking lot: “I tried to tell you. It isn’t enough the guy’s a potted plant with a temper? A parade he wants now? A parade? You rubes, you absolute children. I told you this guy was nuts. And now he wants a stinkin’ parade. Well, you break it, you bought it. I’m done. I gave at the office. Now get out of my way, I got pincushions to buy.”
Mayor Huffman declined comment, but did take a few moments on Monday to respond to city trade representative Dixie Salazar’s remarks that the upcoming Hammer Time Festival should remain a nonpartisan celebration of the town. “I heard she said something like that,” the mayor told a small crowd that had gathered for a Fondo del Barril event marking the rollout of Huffman’s Old-Time Summer Sausage. “I didn’t see it, but I heard. That’s okay. We’ll see what happens. Nasty woman. Maybe something not very nice happens to her. Things happen to people. Hey, have you tried the sausage? It’s got that smoky flavor that spells summertime fun for kids from 8 to 80.” Fifteen minutes later Ms. Salazar’s office issued a statement to “clarify [her] recent remarks on the possibility of a parade honoring Mayor Huffman. I never meant to imply that a parade honoring our mayor was a bad idea. In fact it is a good idea. The best idea. My words were twisted. Who doesn’t love a parade? Children love a parade oh God I HAVE CHILDREN. I’ll see you at the parade.”
Also endorsing the parade plan this week was police chief Lewis Tate, who announced the department would go ahead with the long-contemplated purchase of a Hurricane 3000 pulsed-energy weapon from The People’s Republic of China to mark the occasion. “Although this thing is an eight-ton camo-patterned beast on monster truck wheels,” Tate said, “I can assure the law-abiding people of Hammertown that they have nothing to fear from it. It’s just a simple community policing apparatus that fires microwave pulses of 80,000 volts to disable the electronics of any aggressor in the region. But let’s be clear: There’s regions, and there’s regions. And I wouldn’t want to be some dirty hippie accidentally standing between my energy gun and, say, a swarm of drones. I’d imagine it could turn a person’s insides to goo quicker than a Vitamix. And that wouldn’t be on me.”
In other festival news, efficiency czar Zane Trogdon announced on Friday that, following an exhaustive review, the contract to operate rides and games will be awarded to Huffman Amusements, a wholly owned subsidiary of Huffman Enterprises LLC. “I don’t know about you,” Trogdon said, “but I’d rather trust my life to a seasoned professional than some carny with a Vise-Grip.” There’s more news in this week’s edition of Community Notes From Hammertown Public Radio.