Jeff Whitten
Contributor, former BCN editor
Welcome to another installment of the Pembroke Mafia Football League, and to heck with standings and games and all that nonsense. It’s time for our made membership to let you know what they want for Christmas.
We’ll start with PMFL CEO B.J. Clark, retired Navy chief petty admiral and Vietnam veteran. B.J. wants a president younger than he is, which pretty much opens the field to 99.4 percent Americans other than the incumbent, who is somewhere up there in the same age bracket as B.J., but not nearly as expert on running the government.
Of course, it’s easier to govern when you don’t actually have to do the job and can instead sit back and snark about all day on social media, but that’s never stood in the way.
If there’s one thing us modern-day Americans are good at, it’s telling everybody else how bad they are at doing their jobs, and they’re bad, let me tell you. It’s a wonder anything ever gets done.
Mike Clark, PMFL Minister of Tractor Fan Belts, wants a sweet job at the Hyundai Metaplant America. Preferably it’s one where he works one day a week and loafers about the rest of the time tending to his sizeable bevy of groupies. He’s flexible on which day he works at bolting sprockets on things that need a good sprocket attached.
Bryan County Commissioner Noah Covington, who represents District 1 for the nonce while also serving as the current PMFL expert on fiber optics, wants his own satellite. He also wants his own spaceport to launch it from. He’s looking at property for the county to buy down in South Bryan, which is where all the Ohio yankees live. Well, not all of them. Six or seven of them are still in Ohio, keeping the lights on for when the southeast sinks into the ocean due to all the extra weight from decades of mass Ohio migration this way and they all go back to resume their strange habits – including calling cokes “soda” and “pop” and thinking Marge Schott was a babe and tattoos make the crops abundant. Oh, and Ohio invented irritable bowel syndrome.
District 5 commissioner Gene Wallace, DMD retired, wants your front teeth. Both of them. They’re for his collection. He says they ward off evil spirits and as an added bonus some countries still consider them legal tender.
Wallace, the world’s funniest retired dentist – he should do his own podcast – bowed out of the PMFL after the end of the first half of the season. That’s ok because if there’s one thing the PMFL is good at, we’ve yet to find it. But he’ll be missed, bless our hearts.
Bryan County Commission Chairman Carter Infinger wants to annex Richmond Hill and send everybody in city government home before they create another amazing festival to inflict on taxpayers. What’s next, he asks, a tribute to upscale vinyl siding? Wrestlemania in the Wetlands? Cornhole Craziness at the City Center? Time to nip these things in the bud, buds.
Squirrel-sized Bryan County Administrator Ben Taylor wants rocket socks. These are socks that come with jet propelled propulsion systems that can suddenly shoot him up in the air like Rocky the Flying Squirrel and scare the heck out of the people who take up too much time at county commission meetings going on about how Georgia elections officials don’t know their you know what from a you know where. Naturally, these folks are not from Georgia. You can tell when they open their mouths and words come out.
Bryan County Fire Chief Freddy Howell wants to be in pictures. That’s why he uses Crisco to tame his hair. Howell is not only from Waycross, he’s also a direct descendant of Obidabah The Omnipotent Owl, who first hooted that the white man was coming and we were all in trouble because they’d build strip malls and convenience stores and massive vinyl beehives called subdivisions and then they’d build warehouses and then they’d rezone the rest of us out of our jocks and stick a ginormous car factory right next to I-16. We should’ve listened to Obidabah the Omnipotent Owl. He hooted truth.
Alex Floyd wants to decide whether or not he’ll step up and run for office so he can make bureaucrats do squats and deep knee bends and the side straddle hop whenever the mood strikes him. And it will.
Former Bryan County News Assistant Editor Ted O’Neil, who won the first half of the PMFL slate with a sterling winning record the writer of this thing is too lazy to go look up, wants Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh to be revealed for what he really is – an evil lizard alien from a planet where they boil people in their shells and eat them like peanuts. One day, Harbaugh, one day.
Ted, by the way, is the BCN bureau chief for Michigan. Which is not and never will be Ohio.
Finally, there’s yours truly, former editor of the Bryan County News. Mostly, I want to make sure certain dreams do not come true – like the one where I somehow wind up over at Richmond Hill city councilman Steve Scholar’s house with a 12-pack of Old Milwaukee Light and he wanted everybody to go outside and wrestle shirtless in the back yard. Good lord.
One last note. I’d like to thank those who reached out with words of comfort after the death of my youngest stepson, Matt Bargeron, who was killed Nov. 20 in a crash on Highway 30 in Effingham County, the day before his mother’s birthday. Matt had a lot of friends and a lot of folks who loved him, and he loved everybody. He leaves behind a wife, three kids – and two stepdaughters – and lots of good things to remember him by and he is missed every day by those who love him. It’s a reminder, also, that while football is great, it’s not life or death. Don’t sweat the small stuff and take care out there.
Jeff Whitten is the former editor of Bryan County News.
