This week’s column continues the theme of Small Town Truisms, and discusses Cronk’s Law, named after one of our constabulary, Sgt. Cronk. It is, “Everybody dies famous in their hometown.” I can add to this that not only do they die famous, but they die bigger and better too.

It’s the opposite of death among celebrities: After the news of their shuffling off this mortal coil hits the stands, but before the not-so-dearly departed hits room temperature, the vultures are feasting. Story after story goes into endless detail about their failed marriages and successful affairs, their drug addictions and nervous breakdowns, their arrests, their mistreatment of children, servants and household pets — whatever can be dredged from the sewers of their lives.

But not so for My Home Town.

Here, when a townie totters across The Rainbow Bridge, they do so pretty much according to the Latin saying, “De mortuis nil nisi bonum” (Speak no ill of the dead).

You need go only to one lifelong rascal’s calling hours to see this in action. Their vices are minimized, if not transmogrified, as mourners scramble to gild the lily. Maybe Jones was a boozer, lit 24/7 like a Christmas tree, but in death he’s remembered for always keeping his car in perfect condition and having a neat haircut. If Mrs. Smith was a shrew and harridan, it doesn’t matter, cuz her Cub Scout troop was the perennial Pinewood Derby winner. And if Brown was a miserable SOB who was impossible to tolerate for more than a minute, it takes a far distant second to how on St. Patty’s Day he sang “Danny Boy” in a voice that could make stone eyes weep.

They may have been lousy role models in life, but in death, even if not to be emulated, they are at least to be smiled upon.

–

The child is the father of man

–

An axiom akin to Cronk’s Law is Dupree’s Corollary, named after the man I heard it from, my pal Peter Dupree. It is, “In Saranac Lake, every townie is famous.” It’s as valid as Cronk’s Law, but is more subtle and complex.

Here’s the skinny: The greatest determinant of where you stand in the town status hierarchy has little to do with what your life was like after you left town. Instead, what matters is what you were like in your childhood and adolescence. Or maybe more exactly, what people THOUGHT you were like. It’s due to a peculiar cerebral hard-wiring, or maybe due to something in our pure mountain air and bubbling spring waters. But no matter why it’s there, it’s there. And it never goes away.

Let’s say that in your flaming youth you were a Great Kid — a Norman Rockwell dream-come-true: Always polite and well-behaved, studied hard, you got good grades, never missed a day in school or on your paper route. Beyond that, you were an Eagle Scout and altar boy who walked old ladies across the street and visited dogs and cats at the animal shelter. You can change the specifics as you see fit, but I’m sure you get the idea.

Then you leave town and come back 30 years later. And when you do, you’ve automatically donned your Mantle of Purity in the eyes of those who knew you.

Of course, no one knows what you did in the last three decades, but if it didn’t hit either the scandal sheets or the police blotter, your rep is still intact. Yep, there you are, 50 years old, and the peeps who knew you Way Back When will still refer to you as “a Great Kid.”

My Brother the Doctor, by the way, was a GK.

But if you weren’t a GK? What if you were pretty much their opposite?

Note Well: I’m not talking about those kids destined to a life of lowbrow criminality — pathological thugs, drooling sadists and the like. Those peeps get transmogrified too, but into nonentities, Saranac Lake’s version of Philip Nolan. Nuff said. No, I’m talking about kids who, for various reasons, were just pains in the prat. You know the ones — mildly arrogant anti-authoritarian wise asses, the bane of teachers, parents and anyone in the community who expected obedience, etiquette and some degree of pleasant conformity … but never got it from them. Those characters, though warned repeatedly to change their ways, refused to, and thus were doomed to be low-rent versions of the Curse of Cain. A guy in my bro’s high school circle was a perfect example. For the purposes of this column I’ll call him JJ.

–

ALMOST smarter than everyone else

–

He was an odd piece of work. He was never violent, or even angry, nor was he disruptive or rude. He just didn’t give a tiddly-doo about following anyone’s orders or suggestions. Ultimately, your advice, and you, didn’t matter. To him, all life boiled down to if he wanted to do it, he would, and if he didn’t want to do it, he didn’t. Period. End of sentence. End of discussion.

It was all based on his unshakeable belief that he knew more than everyone else.

He was extremely bright — so bright that his senior year in high school he won a full-ride college scholarship. And what he did with it is a perfect example of how he thought — and lived.

His approach to school work was like everything else — he did what he wanted. And because he had a fine mind, he usually could put minimal effort into schoolwork he didn’t like, and he’d get away with it. But toward the end of his senior year, this approach failed him — literally.

One of his courses had a mandatory research paper, and for reasons known only to him, he didn’t want to do it. The teacher, a low-key and gentle soul, but no one to be trifled with, kept on him about the paper. And, predictably, he kept refusing to do it. With the end of the school year on the near horizon, the teacher reminded him repeatedly about the paper, and JJ just dismissed him with a give-a-damn shrug.

But the paper was a huge deal because according to the terms of his scholarship, he had to graduate on time, or he’d lose it. And as you can probably figure out, while he could’ve slammed together a half-baked paper and passed the course, he didn’t. So he flunked the course, didn’t graduate in June, and lost his scholarship.

Anyone else would’ve been overcome with regret, remorse and shame, but not our boy JJ. Creature of arrogance that he was, he just didn’t care. To him the scholarship didn’t matter, a college degree didn’t matter and a good job didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was H-I-M.

After high school, he hung around town for a while, doing not much of anything, till he got drafted. Off to boot camp he went … and only a few weeks later, he was back, having got booted for something like “inability to adjust.”

Some time later, he left town and headed out West, where, presumably, the streets were paved with gold. He never returned that I know of. Since he was an only child and had no relatives in town, after his parents passed away, he all but vanished from town and from our collective consciousness.

But remember how I said that when townies remember other townies, they think of them them only as they were as kids? Well, I’ve got the perfect real life example for you.

A few years ago, my brother and I were talking Old Time Saranac Lake and suddenly JJ popped into my head.

“Remember, JJ?” I said.

“What made you think of him?” he said.

“No idea,” I said. “It just happened.”

“Strange,” he said.

“I wonder whatever happened to him,” I said.

“Oh, I’m sure he did all right for himself,” he said. “Probably taken in by some sweet, and rich, old widow. Never worked a day in his life after that.”

“You really think he could fool someone that well?” I said.

“Not really,” he said. “But it happens all the time, so why not him?”

Neither of us said anything for a moment, then he spoke.

“But I’ll tell ya one thing,” he said.

“What’s that?”

“He sure couldn’t get away with it here.”

“Oh?” I said.

“Yeah,” he said. “People would remember him too well. Matter of fact, I’ll tell you something.”

“What’s that?”

“If at high noon I took off all my clothes and walked from the town hall to the post office in the middle of the street the whole way, everyone townie would take one look and say the same thing.”

“Which is?”

“Which is, ‘Look at that nitwit, JJ. He hasn’t changed at all.'”