Junction City Stories II
Lions Club: Predators and Prey, The Karens of Oak Meadows, and other stories
Inside the Life and Failures of Norman Huddleson, Junction City’s Red-Hatted Shame
by our correspondent in exile
I. Prologue: An American Tragedy in Cargo Shorts
If one wished to sculpt the perfect effigy of American decline, they could do worse than Norman Huddleson. A man whose very existence seems forged in the cruel alchemy of processed cheese, AM radio, and weaponized ignorance, Norman is the pride and pustule of Junction City. Imagine if a monster truck had offspring with a folding chair from a VFW hall – that unholy child would wear a red hat and answer to Norman.
He sits now in a recliner that has endured more body mass than the Hoover Dam, wrapped in the tatters of a “TRUMP 2020: NO MORE BULLSHIT” T-shirt. His jowls quiver with every pronouncement about “the deep state,” and his gut is the size and consistency of an oil drum left out in the rain. His neighbors do not invite him to barbecues, nor do they invite him to funerals – the grief of death would be lightened, even mocked, by Norman’s presence.
Still, Junction City knows him. They know him the way one knows the stench of the feedlot downwind: omnipresent, nauseating, and yet so woven into the local atmosphere that one almost forgets life could smell any different. Norman is not exceptional, except in the volume of his mediocrity. If ignorance were horsepower, Norman could tow the Union Pacific.
II. Origins of a Patriot Buffoon
Norman was born in 1975, though the hospital records are still vague about the exact date. His mother, Barbara, was a woman of prodigious television appetite and limited hygiene, known to quote soap operas as though they were scripture. His father, Dwight, a man whose greatest ambition was to “get a boat someday,” disappeared in 1989 under the pretext of buying cigarettes. He has not been heard from since, though there are rumors of a second family in Topeka.
From the start, Norman displayed a hostility to learning so profound it bordered on religious conviction. He spent his school years in a fog of Mountain Dew and resentment toward authority. His crowning achievement in high school was the senior prank of releasing three raccoons into the gymnasium. What he considered a masterstroke of rebellion became, instead, a permanent infestation. For years, Junction City’s basketball games were punctuated by the skittering of nocturnal creatures overhead. Norman, however, claimed this was “performance art.”
Mathematics enraged him. Fractions were a communist plot; algebra was “liberal brainwashing.” He once told a teacher that multiplication tables were “unconstitutional.” That he graduated at all was a testament less to his effort than to the staff’s exhaustion. His diploma was delivered not with pride but with the collective sigh of relief one hears when an infestation has finally been fumigated.
III. Employment, or the Lack Thereof
The adult world, predictably, did not welcome Norman with open arms. His résumé reads like a rap sheet against capitalism itself.
First, there was Walmart, where he served briefly as a greeter. He was dismissed after yelling “Build the wall!” at Hispanic customers and asking women in yoga pants for their phone numbers in the parking lot.
Roofing came next. He lasted one summer before tumbling spectacularly from a second-story project after insisting he “Didn’t need OSHA telling him how to stand on a goddamn ladder.” The resulting injury granted him a small settlement and a permanent limp, which Norman regards as proof of government persecution.
His stint as an Uber driver was short-lived. Within weeks, his passenger rating plummeted after he subjected riders to Alex Jones podcasts at earsplitting volume and insisted on stopping at drive-thrus mid-fare. “One star,” wrote one passenger. “Driver said Hillary Clinton is a lizard and made me pay for his Arby’s.”
Despite these debacles, Norman rages against “lazy freeloaders on welfare.” This, while he proudly cashes his disability checks, which he describes as “patriot reparations.” He sees no contradiction here; hypocrisy requires a memory longer than a mayfly’s, and Norman’s attention span evaporates after every commercial break.
IV. Domestic Affairs
Romance, such as it was, sputtered briefly in Norman’s life. His first wife, Kelly, fled with her yoga instructor after two years of matrimonial misery. Her departure note was brief: “The smell will kill me if I stay.”
Undeterred, Norman married again. His second wife, Andrea, produced two children before disappearing into what neighbors jokingly call “the witness protection program.” In truth, she took the children and moved three counties away, hoping distance would dilute Norman’s gravitational pull of incompetence.
The children, now teenagers, are estranged. One works at a socialist food co-op, the ultimate betrayal. Norman describes this child as “dead to me,” though privately, he checks their Facebook profile with a mixture of rage and longing. The other refuses contact altogether. Rumor has it that when asked at school what her father does, she replied simply: “He’s…online.”
V. Norman the Statesman (in His Own Mind)
Norman sees himself not as a failed roofer and absent father but as a prophet without honor in his hometown. He attends every Junction City council meeting, rising from the back row to denounce the tyranny of recycling programs and fluoride in the water. His speeches, delivered in a frothy monotone, are legendary for their incoherence.
Once, he tried to run for city council himself. His campaign slogan, “Make Junction City Less Gay,” was both offensive and confusing, as Junction City’s gay population is minimal and blissfully uninterested in Norman. He raised $46 for his campaign, most of it in nickels, before withdrawing.
At home, Norman’s living room is a shrine to Donald Trump. Bobbleheads, mugs, a cardboard cutout of the wannabe dictator that startles guests in the night. He reads QAnon message boards like Talmudic scripture, tracing connections only he can see. When challenged, he insists he is “researching,” though his research consists mainly of YouTube videos titled “THEY DON’T WANT YOU TO SEE THIS.”
VI. The 'Catastrophic' Accident
The defining event of Norman’s middle age was not an act of courage or generosity but an act of rank stupidity. Attempting to repair his beloved F-150 in his driveway, Norman hoisted the truck with nothing but cinderblocks and optimism. Gravity, however, remains stubbornly liberal, and the truck collapsed onto his leg.
The result: a broken tibia, a concussion, and several nights in the Springfield hospital, which Norman described as “a gulag run by communists in scrubs.” His discharge papers noted “noncompliance” in bold letters. He refused pain medication unless it was “American-made,” and he attempted to leave his bed during surgery prep to “smoke a victory cigar.”
The accident led inevitably to a GoFundMe campaign. Written in the fractured English of a drunk tweeting at midnight, the page pleaded for $75,000 to cover “deeep state medicull expenss” and “loss of freedoms.” The campaign photo showed Norman in a hospital gown, glaring into the camera like a man wrongly imprisoned.
VII. Crowdfunding a Revolution (That Never Came)
The campaign was, in every measurable sense, a failure. In three months, Norman raised $312. Most of this came from distant cousins who later demanded refunds, citing “misuse of funds” when Norman posted photos of himself drinking beer with his leg in a cast.
Local ridicule was merciless. Screenshots circulated on Facebook with captions like “Norman finally found socialism” and “If you hate handouts, stop asking for them.” Even his drinking buddies refused to donate. One left a comment on the campaign itself: “Sell your truck, dumbass.”
Norman, naturally, saw this as proof of persecution. “Pple wont support a PATRIOT,” he ranted online, “becuss their been brainwashed by CNN and Satan.” The irony – that he begged for the very communal generosity he condemned – was lost on him, as was the reality that almost no one in Junction City liked him enough to part with a dime.
VIII. A Hero in His Own Basement
Today, Norman lives a menial and meaningless existence, punctuated by furious bursts of Facebook activity. He sits in his recliner, a cathedral of polyester and grease stains, pounding out manifestos about stolen elections and chemtrails. His diet consists of Slim Jims, Busch Light, and the occasional microwave burrito, consumed with the reverence of a monk at Eucharist.
A MAGA flag droops from a bent pole in his front yard, permanently at half-mast because Norman never learned how to raise it properly. The neighbors complain, but Norman insists it is “a symbol of mourning for our great nation.”
He rails daily against socialism, immigrants, vaccines, pronouns, and any noun he cannot spell. Yet his greatest enemy remains reality itself – the stubborn fact that he is unloved, unheeded, and entirely ordinary. In a saner world, Norman would be forgotten. But in Junction City, his very absurdity makes him unforgettable, like a rash one cannot quite scratch away.
IX. Epilogue: Junction City’s Cautionary Tale
Norman Huddleson is not a monster. Monsters inspire awe, fear, perhaps even respect. Norman inspires only pity, contempt, and the occasional gag reflex. He is not unique; he is a distilled archetype, the shrill echo of a thousand voices that confuse grievance for politics and ignorance for wisdom.
The American Dream did not die in fire or glory. It died in Norman’s GoFundMe page, begging for alms from a community that would not piss on him if he were aflame. His legacy is not of achievement but of contradiction, a life lived loudly and badly in equal measure.
May his Wi-Fi someday fail, sparing Junction City – and the rest of us – from his digital sermons. Until then, he remains where he has always been: sweating in a recliner, red hat askew, raging against phantoms while the real world passes him by.
And perhaps that is the truest tragedy of all: not that Norman exists, but that America made him possible.
