Jeff Whitten, Local columnist.
Welcome to a brand new installment of the mighty Pembroke Mafia Football League, and here’s hoping everybody is feeling their oats and full of beans and vim and vigor and ready for whatever alarming emergency we need to be ready for.
You never know these days. It’s a scary world, what with one thing and another out there lurking in the bushes. It might just be a monkey, but more on that later.
Truth is, the world these days is filled full of scary things, with hairy wings and warts and Mohawk haircuts and tusks, and big wrinkly butts, the latter part which might just look like somebody you know but are afraid to ID them in case they find out and come shoot out your porch lights. Of course, the world has always been filled with such stuff, only we know more about it now thanks to community pages on social media.
Man, I’m like a one-man roomful of monkeys with keyboards, just banging away in hopes of writing Shakespeare. Which is of course how I got so far in life. I banged away at a lot of keyboards.
But that’s neither here nor there. Real quick, Monday was Veterans Day so time to offer a salute to the veterans in our group – that’s B.J. Clark, Mike Brown and me, mostly, although I spent my entire six years in the Army as an enlisted peon hiding from sergeants and sneaking beer into the barracks while BJ and Mike B. are real heroes. B.J. is a Vietnam veteran. Mike, the world’s oldest sportswriter, is a Marine and was part of Roosevelt’s charge up San Juan Hill.
I was in an enlisted man’s club in Germany when the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union collapsed. Oh, and also when Germany won the World Cup. Prost!
Anyhow, in honor of Veterans Day we’ve just decided to induct the entire membership of the John Duggar Pembroke American Legion Post 164, since B.J. is a big cheese there but also because they’re great and very good looking Americans like us PMFL’ers. Welcome aboard, folks.
I would mention them all by name but won’t in case any of them are wanted by the ATF and didn’t put that down on their membership forms. You never know these days.
Speaking of monkeys, you likely already know about the monkeys that got loose over in my home state of South Carolina – which is where the Lowcountry is because it ain’t in Georgia – and, as you might expect, we in the PMFL are rooting for the monkeys to win. Free Willy!
If any turn up at my wife’s house I’m going to hire them to get the leaves off the roof, then train them how to sneak over to the neighbors in the middle of the night and set off their alarms as payback for all those years they woke my wife up by holding loud bro-country listening appreciation sessions outside at 2 a.m.
They also used to get into weird R-rated hollering matches while playing corn hole, of all things. Those are some big women and I’m afraid of them, so stealth will be the order of the day. Still, these South Carolina monkeys are likely nimble enough for the job and I’ll make it worth their while.
While we’re at it, why is it that nobody names college football teams after monkeys, apart from the Pittsburg State Gorillas? Which is in Kansas, of all things. If we ever get a football league made up of teams with only monkeys for mascots, well, here’s some suggestions: Beaufort Bat Apes (half bat, half ape); South Carolina Squirrel Monkeys (same scenario, only with monkeys and squirrels); South Florida Swamp Apes; Bryan County Bigfoot Tree Monkeys, Buckhead Big Shots. The list could go on for days.
Standings:
Bryan County Administrator Ben Taylor is in first with 23 misses. He has to be up in front or nobody will see him. If Ben were a monkey he’d be a dwarf wooly spider monkey. In a suit, with fancy socks. He could also be a sock monkey, come to think of it.
In second with 25 misses apiece are the Rev. Lawrence Butler and former Bryan County News assistant editor Ted O’Neil. If they were monkeys they’d be snub-nosed leaf blower monkeys.
In third are Mike Brown, B.J. and Mike Clark, each with 26 misses. If they were monkeys they’d be Big Daddy Dog Monkeys, especially Mike C.. He has a gaggle of groupies.
In fourth are District 1 Commissioner Noah Covington and either retired Fire Chief Freddy Howell or District 5 Commissioner and retired dentist Gene Wallace, DMD, with 29 misses. If they were monkeys they’d be Wizard of Oz Flying Monkeys. Or Molar Monkeys.
In fifth is either Freddy or Gene, this time with 30 misses. Don’t ask me, I just work here. Anyhow, if Freddy or Gene were a monkey in this one they’d be gregarious monkeys, which according to Encyclopedia Britannica, are active during the day and able to make long leaps between trees and also have stomachs with sections in them so they can eat twigs and beetles.
District 1 commissioner-elect Alex Floyd is in sixth place with 34 misses. If he was a monkey he’d be a Giggling Conifer Chimpanzee.
In last at the moment are two native sons of the great state of South Carolina – me and Bryan County Commission Chairman Carter Infinger, with 35 misses each. And if we turned into monkeys, we’d be the good looking kind with lush hair that don’t have brightly colored butts that turn bright red when we’re alarmed. Mine won’t anyway.
This week’s games:
• Tulane vs. United States Navy: Mike B., Ben and Carter take the Green Wave.
• Tennessee at UGA: Carter and Mike B. take the Vols. I picked UGA as the lesser of two evils. Which is sort of how I vote nowadays.
• Troy at Georgia Southern: Everybody takes the Iggles. Now watch them get beat like rented mules.
• Michigan State at Illinois: Alex, Ted and Freddy take Big Teddy’s alma mater. The rest of us take the Illini.
• Utah at Colorado: Mike Clark takes the Utes.
• Clemson at Pittsburgh: I take Pittsburgh all by myself. Clemson is not a real school. It’s a front for cow tipping.
• Boston College at SMU: Alex is the only Boston College picker.
• LSU at Florida: Alex, me and Freddy go with the Gators. That’s it for this week. Don’t eat anything if you don’t know what it is and please be nice to monkeys.
Now retired, Jeff Whitten is a former editor of the Bryan County News.