DotPenn

Anti-Grange activists: Grange power can be felt, smelled everywhere. 

Tens of thousands of area residents stream into the 134th Grange Encampment and Fair at Centre Hall this week for a heaping helping of home cooking, laid-back entertainment and subtle indoctrination into a new and deep-fried world order.

For Dirk Van Patten, leader of the Knights of the Loyal Order of Grange Smashers, the shining tent city on the hill is anything but the last, best hope for mankind; it is an insidious attack against personal freedom. Grange leaders, Van Patten and his group believe, are pulling the strings of governmental and societal power, while manipulating the comfort food industry to their own ends.

According to Van Patten, the secretive Grange organization has spread its lodges throughout rural Pennsylvania like gnarled, deceptive roots. He also distrusts the Grange because he said it is controlled by a few elite families.

“You know them tents at the fair are passed down from family to family,” Van Patten said. “What does that sound like? I don’t know… Maybe… Human chattel!”

Van Patten also believes the Grange uses its ties with the entertainment industry to spread its message into mass consciousness and also wields that power to make or break careers. Garth Brooks, retired country superstar, got his start at the Grange fair in 1990.

Van Patten still harbors deep-seated anger against Brooks, or “Grange Crooks,” as he calls him.

“Crooks was groomed at the Grange fair,” Van Patten said. “Groomed to destroy real, honest-to-goodness, steel-guitar pedal-to-the-metal country music with his brand of poppy, neo-sentimentalist horse crap. For that, I will never forgive him.”

Marcus Londer, spokesperson for the Grange’s anti-conspiracy magazine, “Talking Points,” said there is no truth to Van Patten’s assertions. The Grange stands for families, farms, and fun.

“We’re not a secret society; our goal is to bring farm families together for some fun,” Londer said. “And begin them on their way through the 33 levels of spiritual aspirations that will give them heightened psychic powers and bring about a New Jerusalem dominated by the Grange grandmaster, He-who-has-no-name.”
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