Stick around long enough, and anything’s liable to end up in your mailbox:

Mr. Lunch,

I just read your article “Red Flags Flying” written in 2018 [Nov. 24 issue]and the follow-ups. This guy [Dirk Winter] has come to our area to replicate the Cambria Lodge and Christmas market.

Most of the people around here are not happy about this as we are a very, very small rural community – just doesn’t make sense, so talk about red flags flying. The only big thing around here is a huge antique show twice a year.

… I believe he may have already bought the property, 150 acres which is very expensive around here and has made a lot of promises of things to come.”

-Marcia Hingtgen

  Carmine, Texas 

Marcia then includes the following link: https://kwhi.com/2022/03/01/resort-proposed-between-round-top-and-carmine/

The comments accompanying that link are worth the price of admission. Seemingly none of the 85 residents of Round Top, Texas want Texas to turn into California. 

Flipping that script, I’m envisioning Round Top as a version of Keeler … without the views. 

Funny part was calling Marcia and having her describe Mr. Winter in his flannel shirt and pickup truck pretending to be a good old boy. She wasn’t fooled in the least. Saw through him instantly.

Seems like we should appoint her to the Mammoth Lakes Tourism board. So what if she doesn’t live here … 

Maybe we can buy them a “Dirk, Don’t Be A Bleephole” billboard.

As you’ll recall, Mr. Winter fleeced the MLT Board, convincing it to hand over $300,000 to finance the down payment on Sam’s Woodsite. 

The purchase price of the four-acre site was $3.9 million back in 2017.

It was most recently listed for sale by Mr. Winter at $5.9 million last fall, but is currently off-the-market. 

When I spoke to Marcia on the phone, she said Dirk was making all sorts of promises. Someone might bring up the road through town being too narrow, and Dirk would pipe up, “I’ll take care of that.”  

What’s funny is the similarity of the playbook. The Christmas market as the Trojan Horse. What Winter really wants to do is build 100 duplexes. And residents fear what impact that will have on the water supply. 

It sure seems like wise women of a certain age are the most vocal advocates these days. This next one is from Mammoth’s Sharon Clark, a former Planning Commissioner:

Is it possible that Mammoth Mountain President and COO Ron Cohen might have been irresponsible with the truth when he said “at some point the Eagle project will go” [The Sheet, March 5]? The tent at Eagle was permitted many years ago with the promise that it was “only temporary.” 

“Temporary” in this case dates to last century.

Why would we believe now that “at some point the Eagle project will go?”  

 Eagle’s tents are ugly … white elephants comes to mind. Visitors barely notice them but we, locals, continue to endure the misfits.