Real heroes: Colebrook keeps its croissants

June 21, 8:27 AMDallas Libertarian ExaminerGarry Reed

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Croissants are still cool in Colebrook

Libertarians love real heroes. Not politicians, not bureaucrats, not self-serving "community organizers," not business bosses who scheme with conniving councilcrats in public/private partnerships designed to turn taxpayer money into fat wallets for politically connected fat cats.

Libertarians love real people who fight for real, actual, no-kidding freedom, not for the lip service political pandering pretend type tripe the ruling classes babble about when the camera eye is open after they've voted away more of our rights in the middle of the night.

Real heroes like the people of Colebrook, New Hampshire.

Even when the paper mill closed, the furniture factory downsized and the Ford Dealership slammed its doors shut, the Le Rendez-Vous French bakery lived on.

Eight years after Verlaine Daeron and partner Marc Ounis arrived in this town of 2,400 and turned an old bank building into a bakery they've been selling out their freshly baked batches of Baguettes, almond croissants, apple tarts and chocolate Madeleines nearly every afternoon.

Then came the shocker; the boulangerie was being forced out of business because the US embassy in Paris refused to renew Daeron's visa. The pastry place, they decided, just wasn't producing enough profit.

Get this now. Even though the customers of Colebrook had voted with their cash to keep the canelés coming, a federal pen pusher in faraway France somehow divined that they didn't deserve to stay open.

But the burghers of Colebrook had already had their fill of failed firms and shuttered shops. So they instigated an uprising.

They rallied around the baked goods business by bombarding the US Embassy in Paris with letters, lobbying their congressmen and signing a petition by the hundreds.

On May 19 the embassy flew the white flag. The battle was over and the bakery had won. Verlaine Daeron's visa was renewed.

Thanks to the free spirits of free people a bit of real freedom was preserved, and the flour will be flying again in the boulangerie de Colebrook.

(see Town rises up for bakery – Boston Globe)