Mar-A-Lago Neighbors Go Militant
Local Residents Fortify
WEST PALM BEACH — “It’s war, I tell you! War!”
One would think that a short, frizzy-haired librarian with cats-eye spectacles from the local, sleepy, one-room lender’s library an unlikely candidate for general-in-chief.
Nevertheless, West Palm Beach has found just that in septuagenarian Gladys Sangre Cortez.
“Ever since he came back, they followed,” she declared, emphasizing the pronouns with quick, savage jabs of her bejeweled index finger.
One wonders just how she reprimands overly loud whispers in her library. Or, just what she would do to former President Trump and his followers if she could get her hands on them.
Cortez has filed complaint after complaint with Town Of Palm Beach Council, the local administrative authority presiding over residents of the long, thin, island that caters to the beau monde of Miami. She has yet to receive a reply.
Her city council of West Palm Beach — noted bedroom community of maids, repairmen and groundskeepers to the well-to-do on the island just to the east of them — does reply to her complaints.
“Just to say it’s not their jurisdiction,” she groused.
The substance of her complaints and the complaints of several West Palm Beach homeowners and business owners is the steadily declining quality of life since the former President returned to Mar-A-Lago in late January, just after Biden was newly inaugurated and Trump was retired.
Overnight, West Palm Beach became the favored destination of Trump fans.
“They drive up and down all night, revving their engines, cheering, hollering, waving those stupid Trump flags, choking up the air with those ridiculous gas guzzlers!” Cortez said.
She claimed that the Palm Beach Police Department blocks the bridge to the island, keeping the rowdies out. “They can’t get to him. And they have nowhere else to go, so they torment us!” she added.
A number of local business owners agree.
“The worst of it was when they discovered Congress,” said Buffy Flegler, owner of Buffy’s Bouffant. “Oh, boy!” she added, “That’s when it went nasty.”
Flegler’s business, a canine salon, is located on Congress Avenue, a local arterial, beginning at Palm Beach International Airport and running north about thirty miles, connecting several residential neighborhoods with local businesses.
“They trashed the street,” Flegler claimed. “Tagging all the businesses, including mine, leaving their…poop…on the sidewalk, trailing toilet paper everywhere.”
“They think it’s funny! Cause of the name,” she wailed. “It’s not. This is where we live! Why don’t they just go away?”
Local officials declined to comment on the matter.
“Trump! He’s not even supposed to live there. Did you know that?” Cortez queried. “He paid ’em off! You know he did.”
She is referring to the recent decision of Town of Palm Beach Attorney that, despite a legal agreement that he would never live in Mar-A-Lago, being a place of business, Trump has been cleared to do just that.
A local residents association, Preserve Palm Beach, is protesting the finding with a final decision due in a few weeks.
In the meantime, across the water in West Palm Beach, the local general is refusing to take this lying down. “We’ve given the proper authorities their chance,” Cortez said, her voice lowering, the eyes behind her spectacles glinting.
“It’s time to take matters into our own hands,” she avowed. “As he likes to say, ‘Stay tuned!’”
✦ ✦ ✦ ✦
Hope you enjoyed that. More of my humor and satire here.