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Monday, October 8, 2007

The World’s Saddest Paper, the World’s Worst Pie

posted by on October 8 at 13:19 PM

Both are in Kalama, Washington, that two-square-mile town near the Washington border where people stop for gas on the way to Portland.

The pie was the stuff of melancholy: canned fruit glop scooped into an individual pie shell and barely microwaved. But the October 3 issue of The Reflector (“the newspaper with integrity”) was the stuff of suicide.

There was the lead story about the volunteer fireman who got fired from his volunteer job and is threatening to sue the city to get his volunteer job back. There was the story about the little girl with the horse named Lisa’s Breeze. There was the police blotter item about Kyle J. Gorman, 21, who was “booked into Cowlitz Co. jail for theft of a donation jar.”

Then there was the obituary for a certain Mr. Root that contained this two-sentence paragraph:

Root loved Jesus, basketball, and music. He was disabled.

RSS icon Comments

1

It's usually a good security precaution for the average OS X user to leave root disabled, no matter what you think about Jesus, basketball or music.

Posted by elenchos | October 8, 2007 1:24 PM
2

Most people who love Jesus and basketball are disabled. In more ways than one.

See also:
Seattle Sonics
Nearest Church

Posted by Mr. Poe | October 8, 2007 1:24 PM
3

Your mistake was stopping for gas in Washington on the way to Portland. Don't you want to pay less to have someone else pump it for you?

Posted by Levislade | October 8, 2007 1:27 PM
4

yeah, well, sure. But Brendan, the Kalama Burger Bar? AWESOME. Really. My favorite burger. We'll stop there in June.

Posted by josef krebs | October 8, 2007 1:31 PM
5

Actually, I was stopping for pie on the way back from Portland.

(But I sometimes stop there for gas on the way, because I am a poor planner.)

Posted by Brendan Kiley | October 8, 2007 1:31 PM
6

a slow news day in slogsville, huh?

Posted by Boredtodeath | October 8, 2007 1:36 PM
7

kalama exist for the burger bar only.

and i think full sail beer is brewed there, but all microbrews are hoppy shite & i stopped paying attention 10 years ago.

Posted by maxsolomon | October 8, 2007 1:37 PM
8

New York Review Books recently published "Novels in Three Lines" by Félix Fénéon for the first time in English. Fénéon anonymously wrote these "police beat" types stories for the French newspaper Le Matin in the early 1900's, and they were collected as abook in the 1940's. They are amazing, sad and potent little nuggets, much like the obituary quoted above. Just a few examples:

Again and again Mme Couderc, of Saint-Ouen, was prevented from hanging herself from her window bolt. Exasperated, she fled across the fields.

There was a gas explosion at the home of Larrieux, in Bordeaux. He was injured. His mother-in-law's hair caught on fire. The ceiling caved in.

A dishwasher from Nancy, Vital Frérotte, who had just come back from Lourdes cured forever of tuberculosis, died Sunday by mistake.

Finding his daughter, 19, insufficiently austere, Jallat, watchmaker of Saint-Étienne, killed her. It is true that he has eleven children left.

On the bowling lawn a stroke leveled M. André, 75, of Levallois. While his ball was still rolling he was no more.

Posted by Gurldoggie | October 8, 2007 2:07 PM
9

Am I bad for finding all of that hilarious?

Posted by Gomez | October 8, 2007 2:42 PM
10

Gomez, I find it hilarious as well. But it's the OBITS that are hilarious, right? Not the dead people. Dead people are never funny. They're mostly boring and dead and shit.

Posted by arduous | October 8, 2007 2:54 PM
11

Some of the obits are of interesting people. Like Agnes Ketola. She got a diploma by mail, worked in the shipyards during WWII, married and divorced the same guy twice and owned a gas station with him! Agnes traveled quite a bit, too.

Posted by Lloyd Cooney | October 8, 2007 3:16 PM
12

That graf sounds like it was straight out of the Federal Way Mirror.

OK, fair enough, Federal Way News.

Posted by K | October 8, 2007 3:49 PM
13

Indeed, arduous.

Posted by Gomez | October 8, 2007 5:26 PM
14

Once I stopped in Kalama with an old boyfriend, on the way back from Portland. We visited an antique shop, where upon entrance we were greeted
with a photocopied newspaper photo of an 18 lb cat sitting in an unusual position. A few minutes later, we ran into the same cat deeper into the store, and the owner gleefully tried to re-position the cat into the same way that it was sitting in the photo.

The End.

(Kalama stories are exciting, yes?)

Posted by Rose Red | October 8, 2007 5:59 PM
15

Speaking of leaving Portland, when did Waddles become Hooters? The giant fried egg clock has turned in a giant boob clock.

Posted by Jim Demetre | October 8, 2007 8:54 PM
16

Jim,

Sadly, Waddles went out of business back in '04.

Posted by COMTE | October 8, 2007 11:34 PM
17

@7 -- it wasn't Full Sail. It was Pyramid. They stopped brewing there in the mid-90s when they bought Thomas Kemper, went hog-wild with an IPO, then blew up.

And you shouldn't fear the hops, pussy.

Posted by drink real beer | October 9, 2007 9:38 AM

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