NUNN, Colo. (AP) - The tension in the small white room just down the hall from the old school gym was palpable.
On one side, the town's seven municipal board members braced for their monthly meeting. Six of the seven are under recall petitions, with one group of residents wanting the mayor and two board members gone, and still another group seeking the recall of three others.
Pretty soon some of those same citizens attending the meeting were booing, yelling and clapping - there was even an occasional plea for decorum.
But decorum is in short supply these days in this farming burg of some 500 residents 80 miles north of Denver.
"What are you getting from the job that makes you want to hold onto it so tightly when so many citizens are saying this isn't right?" demanded Nunn resident Jennifer Hall, addressing Mayor Pro Tem Christy Alexander, the target of one's group recall.
"Because I've had many citizens tell me that what I'm doing is right and that they support me," Alexander responded with a rising voice.
"Please don't yell at me," lectured Hall.
"I'm not yelling at you," Alexander snapped back. "I can show you yelling."
But she then thought better of it and apologized.
It seems that Alexander had made about half the crowd angry by revealing that she filed a legal appeal that would block, at least temporarily, the recall vote against her, Mayor Jeff Pigue and board member Jack Smith.
Meaning that the Nov. 3 recall election against the other three board members, Karen Burd, Jenny Johnson, and Joyce Taylor, will go forward while Alexander's appeal to Weld County District Court makes its way through the legal system.
The reasons for Nunn's civil war run deep - and wide, depending on who you ask in this town with dirt streets surrounded by short-grass prairie.
Resident Carol Holwerda described Nunn as the perfect place to live with generous citizens, and a town slogan, painted on its water tower in more agreeable times, is "Watch Nunn Grow."
Now, it might as well be "Watch Nunn Fight."
For one side, the removal last year of Mayor Tom Bender became the rallying cry to recall Pigue, Alexander, and Smith, all of whom voted to oust Bender. The trio claimed Bender neglected his job and "exhibited acts of grandeur," and that he'd gone turkey hunting, improperly leaving the town administrator in charge.
Bender acknowledged the turkey hunting, but said the charges against him were baseless.
"What they did was illegal," he said.
Many in town agree.
"I have referred to them as pirates. They spit in the face of the voters in this town," said Holwerda, 72, one of the people who started the petition against those board members.
The people on the other side of the petition want Burd, Johnson, and Taylor out, contending they consistently vote against paying the town's bills out of a personal vendetta against town clerk Tori McMechen and other staff.
Johnson said that's not true, and that she would approve the bills if there was proper record-keeping, including time cards for workers.
"That's where a lot of the tension in town is," Johnson said. "The majority of the calls that I get from citizens is telling me that either the maintenance workers are hanging out in the field - literally sitting there, doing nothing, in their vans outside the city limits, or that the town clerk is not at her office, town clerk is closed."
The other side, of course, disagrees.
"I have to say, first and foremost, I hate all of this. I don't know if anyone has been brave enough to say that. We don't need this," said Bobbie Crosby, who gathered signatures for Burd, Taylor and Johnson's removal.
Town board member Brian Jex was not a target of a recall, partly because he was not around when the previous mayor was removed. But he has resigned his seat anyway.
"We are just not getting anything done and I decided I just didn't want to put up with it anymore," he said.
Meanwhile, town clerk McMechen not only certified the recall petitions for both sides, but caused a stir by signing those in support of recalling Burd, Johnson and Taylor.
"I'm not going to deny it," she said.
Resident Tina Hawkinson, a waitress at the Nunn Cafe, said she doesn't think a recall is necessary and called the disagreements petty.
"I think they should sit down and discuss everything," said Hawkinson, 47.
But one professional mediator who offered his services for free at last month's meeting thought better of it after some board members refused, and he got what he described as alarming glares from residents.
"I mean, I didn't even know these people," said Craig Conrad, who claims mediation work with foreign military and police units. "If looks can kill, you know, that kind of thing? I was like, Wow. OK. Maybe this was not such a good idea."
Mayor Pigue, 47, who has a day job as a construction worker, said "mediation would've been just beautiful."
"We all work, we do this for free. You know, we don't get paid for this," he said, exasperated.
Pigue said some of the disputes arise from whether to pay one board member's friends to cut the town's trees, or to let staff do it. Pigue, whose cell phone ringtone emits the theme song from "The Good the Bad and the Ugly," admits that the constant infighting has left him indifferent to the prospect of being recalled.
"You know, at this point, I don't give a s---," he said. "I don't."