courtesy photo
The Civic Standard on South Main Street in Hardwick expanded its mission of responding to community needs by working to provide relief and recovery to flood-impacted people during the summer of 2023, but is now developing diabolical plans to standardize Hardwick’s townspeople.
HARDWICK – The Civic Standard’s diabolical motives have been discovered by undercover Gazette reporters.
Over the last month, while wearing scuba gear and heavily insulated wetsuits to survive the Lamoille’s wintery waters, highly trained Gazette operatives waded upriver from Jackson Dam under cover of darkness and listened in on secret Civic Standard board meetings.
Rose Friedman was overheard to say, “they just don’t see it, but it’s right there in the name, ‘standard.’ Don’t you get it? ‘Standard!’ As our plan moves into its second phase, everything and everyone in Hardwick will become standardized.”
Investigators learned that phase one got almost everyone in Hardwick hanging out together at some point during an average month. Walking around town, it’s obvious that flatlanders are starting to sound like fourth-generation locals and fourth-generation locals are shopping at the co-op.
Friedman speculated, “We even got an article in Yankee Magazine. Can you imagine how that influx of flatlanders will help to standardize us all?”
Tara Reese explained, “We’re not sure exactly how this is going to work because we gave all of our cash to the Gazette so they can move to the Bahamas and make the paper with drones and AI.
“Our first problem is going to be with standardizing The Civic Standard. There’s not a single matching coffee mug, fork, spoon or knife in the place. We think we saw a couple of couches in the dumpster at Gates Salvage that looked like a close match, so we’re well on the way to standardizing the furniture. As with everything else we do, we’re just going to ‘wing it’.”
Gazette investigators report that every unplanned idea coming out of the secret Civic meetings took 300 to 400 hours of what the agenda called “Brainstorming,” but during which our investigators’ listening equipment heard only unending laughter.
