the town dandy / By Hank Sims

Peanut gallery

You want more? The Humboldt County Planning Commission will consider Riley’s development at its regular meeting on Thursday, May 3.

We are in receipt of a curious letter regarding last week’s cover story on colorful Eureka character Jerry Droz (“Sometimes Jerry wins,” April 12). The letter itself is perhaps a bit incoherent. Also, its purported author one “Ronald Kenneth Dorn” of Trinidad does not, in fact, seem to exist. Those are two reasons why we have not published it. Nevertheless, the letter is wonderfully illustrative in its own way. It shows that the voters of the City of Eureka made a big, big mistake when they declined to elect Droz as their mayor last fall.

Because what do you want in a mayor? You want leadership potential. Well, as the “Dorn” letter indicates, Droz’s leadership qualities are far greater than those of your standard politician. The man has a mesmeretic ability to burrow his way into his followers’ minds. This gives him, among other powers, the ability to control the way their fingers fall on the keyboard.

What do I mean? Take, for example, Droz’s rules of written English. Never one to rest on his laurels, the valiant Jerry has in the past put forward a radical scheme for reconstructing the rules of punctuation. Take this representative example, culled from The Petch House, the local blog that published the first known exegesis of Drozian grammar. The extract is taken from a Droz letter to city government:

“Likewise , those not following my lead will soon find that things will not go right. I had asked , Dan Moody to install signs limiting the amount of time vehicles can park in front of , Kragen’s and The Golden Gate Service Station ….”

Two things leap out in this sample: space before comma and comma before proper noun. Those are the two fundamentals of the Droz style. Back when the mayor’s race was hot, you found samples of it all over the local blogs, signed by fervent Droz supporters such as “Randy Wybeck,” “Big John” and “Dana W.” Clearly these good citizens found Jerry to be not only a persuasive political leader but a forward-thinking syntactician.

What the “Dorn” letter proves is that Droz’s devout following has not waned with time; indeed, it seems to have spread to remoter outposts. Quote: “The recent article regarding , Jerry Droz was one of the best you have ever published … We don’t have these problems where we live in , Trinidad because we don’t cater to all the derelics , criminals and assistance for Drug addicts and drunken alcoholics the way , Eureka does .”

Well , thank you , Mr. ” Dorn ” and God bless ! Maybe , Eureka didn’t see things the way , Droz did , but I think I’m coming around !

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