Well, we’ve been getting a whole slew of emails from some of you that haven’t lived in town in years and never visit (not to name any names). You want to know what was meant in the Friday update by “Jurisdictional Anomalies,” and we’ve gotta tell ya, we’re a little reluctant to get into it. Firstly, the staff of Leverite Community Press aren’t lawyers, and the one we have is nice enough to take care of Museum business for free, but we wouldn’t want to do anything that would mean that we had to pay him.
Secondly, it’s a rather sordid tale, and if you weren’t around for it, well, that’s probably for the best.
As you know, Sheriff Marie Wells and Police Chief Lola Wells have been at odds since their momma rocked them. I should be allowed to end this story right there.
But that would be the route of the wise and the cowardly. So, the most recent trouble came about when that Reiner fellow came to town a few years ago and started making noise about opening a bunch of drive-through diners and convenience stores.
Now, most of the time one of these Adventuring Entrepreneurs drive all the way out here, they come with a big idea and spread a bunch of money around. It isn’t long before they realize that their big idea has been tried before, it wasn’t profitable back then either, and they’ve just padded a bunch of retirement accounts. Honestly, of the hundreds of thousands that get spent by these guys, they’d probably have a better time burning all their cash in Vegas.
But this Reiner guy, he was different. He seemed intent on stepping on everybody’s toes and generating a lot of ill will. Tried to open a Denny’s knockoff across the street from Edna’s, an AM/PM across the street from Stumpy’s, and even an “Oregon Coastal Museum” across the street from the Historical Society’s offices. He was like The Man Who Corrupted Hadleysburg crossed with the Count of Monte Cristo. He was a real piece of work. Well, in the course of his shmoozing and pressuring for permits and what not, he got Wells and Wells crossed-ways of each other, and when he skipped town (or vanished during a day hike, nobody’s real certain what happened), neither sister wanted a thing one to do with cleaning up the mess. Each even blamed the other one for this guy showing up in the first place. So, all these little properties at the edge of town, they didn’t go back to the county, and as Leverite isn’t exactly incorporated, they couldn’t be seized by the city to cover the money the guy owed.
So they are sitting in a sort of limbo. Most of them are pretty overgrown at this point. The forest takes things back pretty fast in this part of the world. So do retirees you owe money to. You can still see where the started the foundation for they Denny’s, but all that left is a rather sloppy slab job with a funny bump in the middle of it. Edna put some potted plants out there and calls it “The Sculpture Garden.” So, at least it hasn’t gone completely to waste.