HARDWICK — The Hardwick Gazette Editor Paul Fixx, says he can no longer shop or eat in Hardwick area establishments because it seems like everyone in town wants to tell him what he’s doing wrong. Fixx finally drove to Morrisville last week where he was able to stock up on groceries away from his neighbors.
Former owner Ray Small told Fixx that he should expect people wouldn’t want to talk with him after the newspaper announced becoming a nonprofit while secretly siphoning off billions in excess cash to support board junkets to tropical resort paradises.
Fixx is pleased to say, “Ray was only half right about what he told me. After less that three months, at least half of everyone in Hardwick does run when they see me coming, but the rest definitely think ‘community-ownership’ means I actually want to know what they think and that I will listen to them. My right hand is so tired from taking notes all day that I have to soak it in ice water while I’m sleeping.”
The Gazette has had to help the Greensboro Recycling Center purchase a new trailer to hold the notes Fixx tosses out after returning from his visits around town. The extra expense has caused the board to cancel their April 1 trip to the French Riviera.
Fixx reports, “Opie alone has caused me to fill hundreds of notebooks with his big ideas for Hardwick. In the first month, every time I returned to the office to start writing an article, I’d look at those notes and they were completely unreadable. I just started piling them on the floor. We finally had to give up the idea of ever printing the paper again because there wasn’t room left to have it delivered. Purchasing the new recycling trailer should help solve that problem.”
Fixx claims, “it’s a lot easier to write articles now, without all those notes to look at when I want to be sure I’m writing accurate quotes. No one reads The Gazette anyway, so I can make up anything I want.”
Not quite a decade after selling The Hardwick Gazette, Ross Connelly reports, “almost everyone in town will talk with me again.” During his time helming The Gazette, Connelly found himself “at odds with every government official, business owner and taxpayer, but time heals all wounds and some people have short memories,” he says.
Commenting on Connelly’s tenure, Fixx says, “Connelly’s problem was that he knew what he was doing and tried to do it right. He actually paid his reporters to attend meetings and write news articles. I don’t have that problem since all our income goes to the tropical trips to fancy resorts and maybe an occasional sports story or photograph of a cute kid.”
Former owners, Eric and Karen Pope had to leave Hardwick after selling The Gazette. They’ve made a new life elsewhere, where they have been able to shed the animosity of former Hardwick area neighbors.
Fixx plans to publish the home addresses and mobile phone numbers of the nonprofit board’s other directors. I think they’ll be pleased to get calls and visitors at all hours, day and night, telling them about every grudge held against public officials, small business owners, and private citizens.
“As for me, I’m looking forward to changing my phone number and getting some sleep again,” says Fixx. “Once I’m caught up on sleep, we’re going to move the Gazette office to the Bahamas and hire a bunch of kids with drones to keep track of what’s going on in Hardwick. AI technology has gotten so good that the staff and I will be able to enjoy the beaches and expensive hot stone massages while the Gazette’s computers download drone footage and produce the newspaper.”
Calling the nonprofit enterprise the best thing since sliced bread, he comments, “what difference does it make to me that the IRS doesn’t have staff enough to process our nonprofit application. With so many businesses like ours avoiding taxes and moving to the Bahamas, how would anyone expect the IRS would have enough cash to hire staff.”
