Columnist Susan Snyder: Small-town editor has last laugh

Friday, Dec. 21, 2001 | 9:23 a.m.

Susan Snyder's column appears Fridays, Sundays and Tuesdays. Reach her at 259-4082 or snyder@lasvegassun.com.

Woe to the writer who shows a community itself.

Battle Mountain residents didn't like the view.

Due to public outcry, or a publisher whose sense of humor perished, or maybe both, Battle Mountain Bugle editor Lorrie Baumann was fired this month for helping Washington Post Magazine humor writer Gene Weingarten in his quest to name the Northern Nevada burg the "Armpit of America."

(If Battle Mountain's the armpit, then Las Vegas is located ...)

Weingartner's 7,300-word, Dec. 2 portrait includes passages such as this:

"I'd seen age, but no quaintness. I'd seen buildings, but no architecture. There was a coin-operated community car wash, but no community park. There was a store that sells only fireworks, but none that sells only clothing. There was a brothel but no ice cream parlor. There were at least seven saloons, but no movie theater."

You can read the entire article on the Internet at: washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/style/columns/belowthebeltway. Click on "Why Not the Worst?"

It's funnier than Liberace's hot-pants combo, downright heartwarming in some places and, according to Baumann, pretty accurate.

She was verbally horsewhipped and outcast for being quoted in Weingarten's article as saying the armpit desription "Sounds about right," and that if people like it in Battle Mountain, "it's mostly a matter of not being able to imagine anything else."

Truth hurts most in print. But the unemployed Baumann stands by what she said.

"He caught the community very well," she said earlier this week. "As far as I know, I'm the only one who took the hit."

However, Baumann said, a letter to the editor the Bugle received right before she left promises one Humboldt County Commissioner will be getting one fewer vote next election.

That would be Gene Sullivan who, when asked by Weingarten where to go for fun replied, "Whorehouse."

A local mechanic told the author Battle Mountain's women were fat. And Shar Peterson, executive director of the town's chamber of commerce, said if her town is an armpit then it's "shaven, and clean and sweet-smelling because out here in the desert, we're arid extra dry."

"I figured he was already coming out, and we'd better handle it the best way possible," Peterson said. "A few people were angry until they went back and read it again. Now they can see the humor in it."

The piece winds down with a narrative of the small town rallying around the big homecoming game. That image drew accolades from dozens of readers who sent Peterson e-mails from such places as Washington state, Texas and even Washington, D.C., suburbs.

Mail is nice. Jobs would be better, Peterson said. The local gold mine just announced a layoff of 210 workers. Nevada mining, similar to its newspaper work, offers few options these days. Battle Mountain residents and their former editor seem to have a lot in common.

Let's hope Santa Claus brings this little sibling town some jobs and one other thing it desperately needs: a sense of humor.

It may come too late to help one newspaper editor. But it's never too late for a community to learn to laugh.