Bill Earngey [Order this photo]

First of all let's agree that Eureka was formed out of whole cloth. Nobody lived here until the first tourists arrived. In that sense, we're a lot like England, a nation of German tourists who never went home.

  That's what we are: a town of tourists who never went home. Some stayed because they wanted to, others because they had no means to leave.

  Regardless, here we are, still recycling a fractious blend of self-interested people with grand ideas of what's good for somebody else. The pious among us serve up mom's apple pie, pretending to champion the whole town, but the bald-faced fact of the matter is that even nuns have an agenda.

  Because of this obviously unmanageable situation, folks down south in State Parks and Recreation call us contentious. Well of course we're contentious, but being quarrelsome is the sweetest side of our personalities. The plain truth is that we know each other too well.

  Some people believe hiring a city manager will solve our personality [political] problems. Get serious, folks, we don't need a city manager. We need martial law.

  With our political problems solved, there's one final step, what to do with the people. The best solution comes from a footnote of the Vietnam War. To win the war, a U.S. general proposed that all the Vietnamese patriots should be taken by boat to the safety of the South China Sea while we nuked the Vietcong. Then we'd sink the boats.

  Or we could be more efficient, and save money, by taking the general's Option Two: If you get them by their privates, their hearts and minds will follow.

  But, who will be the getters and who will be the got? Okay, here's the deal. The ties that bind us are straight from Renaissance diplomat and writer Niccolo Machiavelli, whose advice was "Keep your friends close and your enemies closer." Yep, it's a kind of twisted "love your neighbor" sort of thing.