Rip Van Manteca was mighty proud of himself.

He had just left the meeting of the village councilors as he had done twice a month for the better part of two decades.

He was proud of the fact everyone called him “Rip.”

That’s because he took great pride in ripping apart Manteca for all its faults, real and perceived.

His latest three-minute slice and dice was classic Rip Van Manteca.

Rip slammed the councilors for inadequate police and fire staffing.

Ridiculed the condition of the village pavement.

Observed how the homeless situation was getting worse and that it didn’t exist anywhere else.

Talked about how ugly Manteca was.

Moaned and groaned about the lack of dining tavern options.

And, to top it off, he complained there was nothing for the young ones to do in Manteca.

On his way home, Rip was feeling a bit tired after delivering his tongue lashing.

When he got to Library Park, he figured he’d sit a spell under a sycamore tree and relax before the homeless all showed up.

Before he knew it, Rip had dozed off

When he came out of his slumber, he looked at his watch.

“Better get moving,” Rip said to himself, “it’s 8 p.m. and the homeless have already taken over the park.”

Rip looked around, however,  and not a homeless soul was in sight.

He walked around to the front of the library along Center Street to see if they were all settling down for the night in the courtyard. There wasn’t a tent in sight.

Rip stopped a man who had been playing a game he didn’t recognized with an oversized paddle at the tennis courts across the street.

“Where are the homeless?” Rip asked.

“Isn’t it great what the village has done?” the man replied in question. “There’s still some on the streets but a lot of them are at the emergency homeless shelter the village put in place.”

“The city has helped hundreds reunite with their families and helped others get off the street and get jobs. And the police move those along that camp illegally and the city cleans up the mess they create so it’s at a minimum.”

Rip had an incredulous look on his face.

“That can’t be,” Rip stated emphatically. “Manteca is the No. 1 hell hole for homeless.

Just then a shiny new 2026 Dodge Durango marked police vehicle drove by.

“What was that!” exclaimed Rip, confused by something that kind of looked like a 1950s-era panel delivery van but had lots of windows and had what looked like a police officer driving.

“Isn’t it grand?” the man said. “It’s one of the five new police vehicles the village bought with another five on the way.”

“No way,” Rip said. “The village idiots only are able to buy the police ‘new’ vehicles that come from the CHP with 90,000 miles already on them.”

A second later the tiller fire truck went by with Village of Manteca Fire Department markings.

“Whoa!” Rip cried out. “What was that? It looks like a ladder truck you’d see in big cities. But it can’t be real. Manteca doesn’t give a rat’s behind about public safety.”

The man looked at Rip, and gave him a quizzical look.

“Are you crazy?” the man said. “The village is hiring three out-of-budget police officers to plug staffing holes in the 82-man police force caused by on-the-job injuries plus just hired nine full time firefighters.”

Rip doubled over in laughter.

“In your dreams,” Rip said. “That business guy on ‘The Apprentice’ that likes firing everybody will be elected president before the village council would ever hire more than one police officer or one firefighter at a time.”

At that point, the two parted ways.

Rip continued walking around the village keeping an eye out for potholes and large cracks in the pavement when he crossed streets.

Soon he realized they weren’t as prevalent.

“That’s odd,” he said to himself.

Rip was also thrown off by the number of dining taverns that he passed.

“Clearly, I’m hallucinating,” he muttered.

Just then he passed a parking jammed with vehicles where the four 15-story Spreckels Sugar silos should have been.

Parents and children were heading into a place called Altitude Trampoline Park.

He overheard a couple of parents talk about Manteca getting a lot of things for kids and families to do.

One rattled off a list of things — the Spreckels BMX Park, the 16-screen movie theatre, the 70 plus city parks, all of the organized youth sports, the Thomas Toy Center, the Boys & Girls Club, all of the village recreation programs and classes, and even the addition of a cricket pitch.

“I can hardly wait for the interactive water play feature to open at Woodward Park and the city to expand its skate park offerings so my wife and I can do more low key things with the kids,” said one father.

Rip was starting to feel sick to his stomach.

This wasn’t the Manteca he loved to hate.

Rip continued his walk while rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.

He could not understand what he was seeing.

On walls downtown he remembered as dingy were more the two dozen large murals.

He passed a drab utility box that had been painted with whimsical art.

He was starting to go crazy, until he remembered what he thought he first saw when he first woke up.

He headed back to Library Park, and more specifically to the corner of Sycamore Avenue and Center Street.

He stood there at the corner repeatedly pinching himself.

Suddenly, he was jarred out of his trance by the sound of giggling kids climbing to sit on his hallucination — a gigantic oversized aqua-colored Adirondack chair — while another snapped a photo.

Just then a lady dressed in a white pant suit looking an awful lot like Teresa Mendoza, the main character on the US Network TV series “Queen of the South”, walked by and said out loud: “Isn’t that chair the cutest thing you’ve ever seen?”

Rip started laughing to himself.

“Clearly, I’m dreaming,” he thought to himself, “as none of this would ever happen in Manteca in a million years, let alone 20 years.”

This column is the opinion of editor, Dennis Wyatt, and does not necessarily represent the opinions of The Bulletin or 209 Multimedia. He can be reached at dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com