The News From Lake Street
By Bald Eagle


Note: This is a fanfic based on the radio show "A Prairie Home Companion: by Garrison Keillor. This is based on a segment from the show called "The News From Lake Wobegon." The last line of this News is taken from that segment.

Other Note: It's been 2 weeks since my last post. Sorry, but I was preoccupied with more important matters. This News takes place from Columbus Day to now.



News 10/20

It's been a quiet week on Lake Street, out near the edge of the 'burg. It appeared that God again was undecided on what He wanted the weather to be. Early in the week it was cold, then cold and extremely windy in the middle of the week, then we got hit with a heat wave ending the week. Oy! People are getting sick here, some just dazed and confused people, just because we have some dazed and confused people all the time.
It was a case of technology failure this week. I swear, people have become so dependent on technology that they begin to lose basic knowledge. When technology fails, mass hysteria sets in. It was Columbus Day, and I had to work at McDonnell's in the 'burg. Now the 'burg is a town that closely resembles a town out in the middle of Nebraska. This is a town that was lifted from Nebraska and just plopped next to my town. Here everyone kind of speaks in a Southern slur-drawl, as if talking in a prolonged drunken state. Everyone in this town is related to one another, or so it seems, for when everyone's last name is Conklin, you kind of think so. You see a stark contrast between the 'burg and towns surrounding it. Here technology or even basic learning doesn't exist, whereas in the surrounding area, everyone has a kind of bead on the 21st century. People who have a slight amount of brain move away, and end up on the street. Our street is kind of a catchall. Our dazed and confused people earlier mentioned come from there. How a McDonalds ended up there I don't know. I mean, these people see road kill and call it dinner. They eat exotic food, such as squirrel, raccoon and chipmunk.
Anyway, during this day, Columbus Day, it was the busiest day that I have ever seen in my life. At around 11 AM the people just flooded in and kept coming and kept coming. Everything was going well, and I was taking orders, and my backup person was chucking orders as fast as I took them. I note here, that because McDonalds is in the 'burg, all food that contains beef normally has instead raccoon, squirrel, chipmunk and various other fare. We were on a roll and people were singing praises to us for our quickness, and then just when things couldn't get any better, things took a sharp turn.
At around 12, it was the busiest part of the day. Lines were almost out the door. Suddenly all the registers in the store crashed. All registers went down left and right. It was a massive system failure. What happened was that when a button was pressed, usually it would popup on the screen, but now it took at least a minute to come up. People were waiting for a long time. Error messages were popping up, mainly a "system not responding" error. When the order finally came up, the order would not go back to the kitchen, so we were yelling orders back and some were getting restless. Managers were running around to and fro all day. This failure lasted for 3 hours, from 12 to 3, when finally the system was temporarily fixed. Also there was a lull in the busy day. At around 4, the system plummeted again, and the crowd came flooding in. Other things that occurred that day was that when change had to be given, the change would not come up, so you had to rely on your head. Close to 5 before I left, it got so bad that my register told me to go to hell. Actually what happened was on the screen, if the register was closed, there was a red background saying register inactive. Here a black background and it said system closed. My register shut itself down. I left a few minutes later, leaving the mass failure behind, and found out that the failure wasn't completely fixed until around midweek.
This week began the baseball playoffs. In New York, everyone's a Yankee fan, but not me. I have my hopes for the Mariners. That put aside, I discovered that people become mean, almost satanic, when encouraging the home team. I walked into school wielding the Mariners hat, and received many comments of which I won't say, laughter, and I was attacked! I mean, to them this was a direct attack on the home team and that I should be crushed quickly. I thought I saw fire and brimstone coming out of people's mouths! Ah well. It's only a game.
So anyway, we see another classic example of technology's failure. Maybe we all should become people like the 'burg. How they've managed to live all these years remains a mystery, but I really do not want to become a society that eats raccoon or squirrel for a living. That's the news from Lake Street, where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.


More to come next week (hopefully).........