SamPratt.com

Am I the only one in Hudson not carrying a concealed machete? Two incidents at the end of May make me wonder.

Driving in the 800 block last Thursday night, two men wandered into the street and wouldn't budge in response to the car horn. One then pointed an object—roughly 1.5-2 feet long and later identified by a source as a machete—at the other. At this point a U-turn back up the block seemed the wise move.

This source later reported that a fight ensued, with the machete man going up against another with a 2 X 4, possibly over a domestic dispute involving a woman and a child. In this version of events, the two replicated that familiar movie sequence in which two boxers or Western desperados take each other out simultaneously, with both the machete and the 2 X 4 guy swinging and taking the other down.

In any case, by the time I’d skirted the block and returned farther south on Warren, several police cars had arrived.

This comes on the heels of a somewhat confusing crime report in The Register-Star also involving a machete-wielder and a gunman. Shots were apparently fired at the machete man, missing a crowd of people at 5th and State on the afternoon of the previous Monday. But eyewitness reports disagreed about who was the aggressor. Only one of the two was arrested initially, according to the paper.

Was the first incident above a continuation of the second? How do you conceal a machete in your pants leg without incurring embarrassing self-injuries? Does Hudson have an inordinate amount of underbrush to clear, spurring people to buy machetes—which later become weapons of opportunity? Or do residents keep machetes lying close by just in case they spot someone with whom they have a beef?