OUR PLACE
Commander Thomas Pinkl, United States Navy, Retired! Veteran of the Vietnam war. Combat veteran of that conflict, and decorated no less. What’s going on with this wonderful aging warrior, living relatively unknown among the midst of normal men and women in Lake Geneva? Trouble. We got trouble here in River City.
We got trouble with a capital “T.”
Commander Pinkl is the man who owns and operates a business right across Center Street from the City of Lake Geneva Municipal building. His shop is called Indochine Tu, and it specializes in selling international antiques, the like of which the Lake Geneva area does not see much of even on the Internet. That’s because Commander Pinkl travels the world discovering odd cultures and even odder artifacts, a would be Anthony Bourdaine without the television show and sampling of antiquities instead of food.
Medical Weight Loss (the chain store diet place) is what happened. They own the business right next door, a little bit north of Indochine Tu. Medical Weight Loss has a number of parking places wedged across from Indochine’s slots. Why the city ever approved parking places wherein automobiles attempting to leave cannot back up far enough to get out without hitting cars across from them is amazing. But there it is. Medical Weight Loss decided that its people could park anywhere in any of the spaces. And that worked for a while simply because Commander Pinkl was out doing other things and traveling the world for a bit. But Commander Pinkl returned. Medical Weight Loss took his places and when he attempted to secure them back by putting down pallets and distributing some of his stuff about his own slots they went to war. Commander Pinkl has a slew of tickets for causing public blight, trespassing and more. Why Ken Roberts, Lake Geneva’s pretty terrific planning administrator, would involve himself in the dispute is anybody’s guess. Ken felt he had to do something. Now the court will sort out what the effect of the citations will be.
Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. If you know anything about PTSD then you know that survivors of real combat come home not wanting to commit or participate in anymore combat for the rest of their lives. But if pushed, if pushed real hard and backed into a corner, out they come. Why is Medical Weight Loss poking Commander Pinkl with a sharpened stick? Why is it important for the weight loss people to possess parking spaces they don’t own or have any right to when a totally free municipal lot is right across the street? Are they simply too big to fit into regular spaces of their own?
Commander Pinkl is not a man to be pitied but if society is going to allow men who stood for one and all, risking his life, to be taken to the point of “when you got nothing you got nothing to lose,” then society might well deserve what it gets when that man is finally pushed to edge of the precipice. Standing on the bottom and looking down is nowhere to take such a grand world-experienced gentleman who took the heat for everyone else and now seeks to fit into a community that doesn’t really have the body of world experience to understand him or care about him.
Commander Thomas Pinkl, United States Navy Retired. You see him here with a look of great determination. When you see him there he’ll be laughing with you.
Commander Pinkl is not going down with his ship. It’s high time that Medical Weight Loss is looked into in depth. Geneva Shore Report X-Files investigators are all over it. What is this little shop that gives injections of all sorts, supposedly real and placebo, to allegedly help local citizens of some heft to lose weight? What of this owner who lives down in Tampa, Florida and his little shops of quiet slimness dotted around the country? Is he any relation to the owner of the timeshare operation that finally ran for cover when the public (with the GSR’s help) figured them out two years back? The glove has been thrown down and very wisely Commander Pinkl is allowing the Geneva Shore Report to pick it up, call for a second, and prepare to stand on the field of mutual combat.
