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Frackophobia & the Super Bowl Squares Office Pool Blues With a quote from "The Most Interesting Man in the World," ad for Dos Equis beer: I don't usually play Superbowl office pools, but when I do I prefer to play squares drawn by the Pittsburgh office rather than the New York office, J.R. Brower (plain old Jackson Brower in his hippie days at Barnett's Creek, when he was still, like many CM readers, a righteous Tree Hugger - you didn't have to ask: He drove the VW bus) sends this Frackophile column, with a note, "This is cathartic writing, in the style of Hunter S. Thompson. Some of the names of the Chicago 7 are purposely incorrect for the sake of humor and to draw comments. Reader feedback is appreciated as well, of course. Stay warm, my friend." (A note: We try to open the pages of CM to anyone. across the whole spectrum - tree hugger or no - but especially those who haven't completely forgotten their roots and remember the 60s, the Summertown/Pellyton axis, Clean Gene McCarthy, the genius of Max Shulman (and anticipated the genius of John Kennedy Toole}, and Gonzo journalism as practiced by that great Kentuckian, Hunter S. Thompson- we think Jackson Brower does.) There something in here to both please and offend lots of folks. ED - still a Tree Hugger, but maybe not quite as righteous about it as I should be. Click on headline for complete column By J. R. Brower Personal opinion of the writer Chapter 1 of The Wayward Pennsyltuckian This is a true story. The names have been changed to protect the innocent. I was once not so innocent, but that, dear reader, is fodder for another chapter. I am currently gainfully employed for a company that we will call Chevron Junior. It is a gas and oil drilling company which draws valuable natural resources from the earth. It also draws heavy criticism from people who I call "frackophobes". Frackophobia runs rampant in this country, and it is amazing that such a non-scientific hysteria has successfully resulted in an oil and gas drilling moratorium in the state of New York. Some of these folks are carryovers of 60s rebels who protested the War in Vietnam, but most are not. They are, however, people who need some kind of cause to feel truly fulfilled in life. At Chevron Junior, Range Resources, Williams, Consol Energy, Rice Energy, MarkWest and EQT, we call them "tree huggers". The problem is that they are also the "not in my backyard" types, who think that coal, oil and gas represent filthy disgusting carbon emissions and are therefore "very, very bad"....kinda like how Babu felt about Jerry Seinfeld after Jerry's carelessness resulted in him getting him deported back to Pakistan.....Babu angrily wagging his finger telling his friend, "Jerry is a very, very bad man." However, these folks do not feel guilty driving cars and having relatively cheap electric bills. Do you suspect that many of these suburban amateur environmentalists the last month or so appreciated the inexpensive natural gas they were burning 24 / 7 to keep their homes warm? Probably not, my friends, probably not. Hippies still refer to our planet as Mother Earth, but you don't hear much about them nowadays. Most folks from the 60's have matured and become yuppies. In between there somewhere is the radical sixties leftover, a category in which I would put myself. Who remembers the yippies? Radical sixties leftovers are not really yippies. They are folks who admired yippies. Remember Abby Hoffman, John Dillinger, Tom Hayden, Jerry Rubin, Carl Schwartz, John Sinclair and Ed Munster? If you do remember and admired these guys back in the day, you were considered dangerous by President Richard M. Nixon, whose most memorable words were "I am not a crook". Dear Reader, if you are over 50 years old and considered the Chicago 7 group heroic "back in the day" (1968) and now believe that Edward Snowden is a patriot, you too are most likely a "radical 60s leftover". I digress...that was then...this is now. A week ago Thursday January 23, my boss, Dustin, came to my desk with a half completed Super Bowl. He asked me if I wanted to buy a square in the traditional company multi-office football pool. I said, "Sure", thinking "they sure are starting this thing off early this year". The New York office usually starts the squares sheet off and then sends it to us in the Pittsburgh office. I asked Dustin when he needed the $20 for the square I selected. "I don't know. That's up to you. You're in charge of it again this year. Try to sell the rest of the squares and get the rest of the money ASAP", he commanded. A tight knot formed in my stomach, because I had planned to opt out this year, but when your boss says jump, you usually ask, "How high?" Of course I was fairly busy with my real work, but I figured I would make the rounds quickly to get it over with. I actually used to enjoy doing the $1000 pool at the old building when squares only cost $10 and the payout was only $400. The Chevron Junior Resource America big whigs like the $2000 high stakes $20-a-square office pool with a 20%, 20%, 20%, 40% payout. By the end of the day, I sold 30 squares and by Monday, I had 8 more. I told Dustin that I only needed 12 more squares to get our 50 quota. I counted my shekels and realized I should have $760 in my pocket. I only had about $380. "Try to get all the money by Wednesday," commanded Dustin. "Zack wants those squares sold ASAP." Zack is Dustin's New York boss, who is a great guy but always in a hurry, because he has to be. The phone rang and it was Zack. "Hey Jackson, email me the squares sheet because Matt Hones (the CEO) wants some squares. I asked him to email it back soon so I could get finished what was left. Within 10 minutes it was back with one square left to sell. Zack was in a big hurry, but Matt Hones had his 3 squares. Zack called again, letting me know that I needed to sell the remaining square by 2:00 p.m. "Why?" I asked. "We don't draw the numbers until Friday, right." "Wrong" answered Zack. "This year we're pulling the numbers early, because a bunch of us have to go down to the new Dallas office for a couple days." At this point, the stress was starting to get to me. I had promised squares to the Geology VP Harry Domino, the Frackmaster Roger Byers and Safety Director Matt Burns. I was under keen pressure, and just like a newly fracked well, the pressure had to be released. I had quit smoking last June using Chantix.. Within 5 minutes, I was in the outdoor smoking pavilion, puffing away like Commander Cody and the Lost Planet Airmen. The temperature was -12 degrees, and I felt like a complete idiot. One of my younger ex-smoker buddies, Kevin, from UBS downstairs chimed in, "You picked a helluva day to start smoking again, Jackson" We cracked up, and the pressure was released temporarily, but I knew that there was going to be hell to pay from Jill, my better half, when I got home. There was indeed hell to pay, and there still is. I promised her that I would quit again after the Super Bowl was over. By Friday, all the squares had been sold and the completed sheets handed out. It was predicted to be a great match-up between Denver, the best offensive team and Seattle, the best defensive team. After the game began, crappy pool numbers turned into good ones after the center hiked the football over Peyton Manning's head, and the safety put the Seahawks ahead by 2. Things went smoothly on the pool, until 2 minutes before the end of the 3rd quarter. I looked at the sheet to see to who had the numbers for a score of 36 Seattle, 8 Denver. Lo and behold, there were two 6's in the Seattle column. Whoever drew the numbers in New York was in a hurry to write them in and must not have put the underlines under the 6's and 9's on the little pieces of paper. The funny thing about it is that nobody noticed it, especially me, a former proofreader at Waggener-Walker Newspapers, Columbia, KY. The next day, Zack, Dustin and I had a think tank conference call to figure out how the 2 Pittsburgh office winners with 6's would be paid. 3rd quarter winners would be paid. My suggestion was that the company chip in an extra $400 so Bonnie P. and Doug D. would both be paid the full amount deserved. Dustin, who had won the $400 for the correct halftime number, even offered to kick in an extra hundred from his winnings. Dustin asked Zack what he did when he realized that the numbers were screwed up. Zack did not mince words: "At that point I started drinking heavily!" We all cracked up. Zack said, "You are just going to have to tell Bonnie and Doug that an error was made and they will have to accept $200 each." My boss, Dustin, chimed in, "Look at it this way, Jackson, this experience will teach you some negotiating skills." I did the best I could explaining the deal to Bonnie and Doug. Neither were "happy campers". Hopefully the New York office will sweeten the pot for them by at least throwing him some Chevron Jr. trinkets - mugs, pens, and hopefully really nice North Face winter jackets with the spiffy red, white and blue Chevron Jr. logos. And this writer continues to smoke more heavily each day.....damn!!!! At least I have a stash of Nicorett Gum. - J.R. Brower This story was posted on 2014-02-09 10:56:44
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