ALLENTOWN, Pa. — Local punk Maddie Conyard tied her beloved tour van to a tree and shot it yesterday after it suffered a broken axle, effectively putting it out of its own misery.
“I just couldn’t take seeing Betty in so much pain,” said Conyard of her beloved Ford Econoline while wiping away a tear. “She was screaming and could barely move. Poor girl. I told her I was sorry and that I loved her, and then I put a slug right in her engine block. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do, but she’s in the big grocery store parking lot in the sky now.”
Witnesses reported hearing a gunshot, followed by Conyard’s howl of anguish after she hit a large pothole on Barlow Lane.
“Betty was a beloved part of the Allentown punk scene. The old girl was such a sweetheart; everybody is gonna miss her so much,” recalled Conyard’s bandmate Jane Blanchard. “We had so many good times with her — she took us everywhere on our first east coast tour with Bad Newsies. She went all the way from Philly to Buffalo on half a tank of gas, can you believe that? Nothing’s gonna be the same without her.”
Many shared in Conyard’s grief.
“I know exactly what Maddie is going through,” said Rabbit Teeth bassist Tim Gussman. “I had to put my Volvo wagon, Brandi, down last summer — she was getting too old and her floor had finally rusted all the way through. It’s sad, but it was her time.”
“Some of the younger kids in the scene asked about Betty the other day, and I didn’t have the heart to tell them Maddie had put her down,” admitted drummer Keeghan Tofler. “I told them we drove her up to a big junkyard upstate, where she can play with all the other tour vans. They keep asking when we can go see her, and I don’t know what to tell them.”
At press time, mourners were smashing Betty’s windows and spray painting graffiti on her sides, as “that’s what she would have wanted.”