Hop Bottom, Pennsulvania By: Bill o'Fox
Hop Bottom is a very real, albeit tiny hamlet in far Northeastern
Pennsylvania. It's one of those Pennsylvania villages with silly,
even suggestive, old-time names.
Hop Bottom's in the forests of wooded Susquehanna County. During its boom, it boasted a population of almost 400. The railroad even had a siding there. Railroads, being important Republican corporations, could ignore the people's name for the place. The Republican railroad called its siding "Foster," not Hop Bottom. They raped the forests to make ties for railroad tracks. Republicans like organized, regimented rape. Cavuto is fortunately a rare disease. It's related to mad-cow disease, but without the milk and cheese. Outside medical circles, cavuto's commonly called leprechaun sickness or nasty's rant. It's a kind of personality cancer. Cavuto first attacked Hop Bottom in 2002. It seemed to come in with the television cable crews. They were stringing wires for big-city TV entertainment into the wilderness of Susquehanna County. At first only one woman was affected. She became cruel and irrational. She raved and obsessed over money. Slowly she physically shrank in stature. She looked a bit grotesque like a leprechaun. To some it was humorous. To others it was tragic. Only Old Keath suspected the truth. He'd once seen nasty's rant down South, among the Ku Klux Klan. After Maggie "X" caught the ailment (we're protecting her identity in the interest of decency), another woman was stricken. Like Maggie, she obsessed over property and money. The pathetic woman raved with hatred, hostility and nonsense. She began to attack neighbors because they were poor or different or "foreign." She wanted Hop Bottom to go to war with Nanpicoke. It was well known that the Downs had weapons of mass destruction. Even if they didn't, they deserved to die. They were foreigners. Cavuto is a complex disease. It affects not just the mind, but also the morality and the physical body. There's no known cure. Fortunately, it's not highly contagious. Normal persons can reject the malady by consciously contradict the inane symptoms. Rational thought easily defeats cavuto. When the epidemic spread to Glenn Beckley, the effect was startling. Glenn was the village idiot. Glenn was the village drunk. People thought he was disgusting, but harmless. They wondered how that girl, Nancy Grapes, could sleep with him. She wasn't all that ugly. When cavuto struck, Glenn suddenly shrunk - allover everything! He became a vindictive leprechaun. He had to sit down to pee. His brain withered like a prune. He developed a sexual interest in the family cat and hated his kids because they were half-breeds, part Nancy. She was evil, okay, but she was also impure. What made it far worse, the brats liked to think for themselves. They defied dictators and weren't registered Republicans. Nasty's rant made Glenn a demigod. He had crazy thoughts. He wanted to hurt people. He wanted wars and thought of ways to exploit the helpless and the poor. Cavuto is a very ugly disease. During the next few years a few others in Hop Bottom developed some of the symptoms of cavuto, but they didn't get the full blown disease. Most of the residents were too sensible for that. Glenn got a radio show. He discovered that radio listeners like demigods. Americans are pretty well full of hatred and intolerance, especially the men. For many of them, Glenn was a talking KKK, a radio hate-machine. The worst trouble with cavuto is that it's spreading especially in rural areas. Where people hate on another, where "foreigners" are demeaned or deprived, where property is more important than people, the cavuto germ is on the loose. Just remember, it can be treated. Thanks to cavuto the population of Hop Bottom has declined. Aliens have left the village so the economy has suffered. Hatred doesn't cultivate growth.
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