Vision Of A Clown

Irrational. Completely irrational.

Who would ever seriously consider putting an upscale hotel next to a sewage treatment plant? Did they think the letters P.U. were only an abbreviation for public utility?

And besides that, why did the City of Plattsburgh go ahead and prepare the lakeside lot before a firm deal was in place to build the hotel-conference center?

Mucho bucks were spent to have the area cleaned up. Also, the ground was compacted to support the new structure and even a parking lot was installed, complete with fancy lampposts. But still no hotel: it remains a pipe dream. (Well, at least the empty parking lot gives seagulls a place to hang out.)

What caused this madness? The story heard on the street (OK, it was actually heard in a back alley) is that supernatural intervention triggered the inexplicable inanity.

One sunny afternoon a former city leader was down by the lake, drinking away on a twelve pack of Neutron Bomb Malt Liquor he had purchased with a city credit card. Suddenly a vision rose up in front of him: a circus clown 902 feet tall. The city leader dropped his can (and also his bladder).

With a raspy ethereal voice the Great Clown boomed: “In my name build a hotel here.”

And with the pop of a clown hammer the vision disappeared.

If anything is going to motivate someone to make rash decisions, it has to be a 902-foot-tall clown.

Incredible, you say? Can’t be true? Well, there are those who say that if you stand at the right spot in the parking lot built for the nonexistent hotel, you can see the Great Clown, even snap a photo of it.



Of course, photos can be faked. And as for those who see the towering clown, maybe history repeats itself a la the Oracle of Delphi. But instead of inhaling intoxicating gas from beneath the earth, they’ve been breathing a surfeit of fecal miasma from the sewage treatment plant.