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Jeff Whitten: The PFML lands here
editor's notes

Welcome to the latest installment of the Pembroke Mafia Football League/Think Tank/Super Scary Weather Team, which has shifted to the opinion page this week because we ran out of room in the back of the paper. It happens sometimes.

It happened this time when the little fat editor who writes it all up and otherwise spends most of his waking hours devoted to newspapering instead finds himself spending an inordinate amount of time toting around boxes full of old pots and pans because his wife is having another yard sale. “This one will be the last ever,” she said while I toted another box from one end of the house to another.

I sure hope so, I said, picking up another box and putting it in the hole on the other end of the house left by that other box I just took the other direction. I don’t know which one. They all tend to look alike after awhile. But I know I’m like Sisyphus, if he had a wife who did yard sales. In the meantime, here’s a short list of things I would rather do than have a yard sale at my house.

1. Eat bait squid out of the box.

2. Have a colonoscopopy, or however you spell it.

3. Get stuck in traffic on Highway 144 East around 5 p.m. and take 42.8 minutes to get from the Fish Hatchery to the Dollar Tree, and think that’s not too bad because I could be stuck in traffic in Ohio or some such place wherever everybody honks at you through their nose.

Week two results: We have a tie for first place with two misses in two weeks between Bryan County Administrator Ben Taylor, he of the unicorn socks, and Richmond Hill City Clerk Dawnne Greene, who spells her name with three n’s and three e’s and some other letters and don’t you forget it.

PS. Either one would annex your backyard for a jelly sandwich, so beware.

There’s a logjam at second, with a number of us pickers tied with three misses apiece. That includes pine tree baron Bob Floyd, he of the manly armpits; your’s truly, who also has manly pits but tends to keep clothes on them; District 1 Commissioner Noah Covington (he doubles as chairman of the Development Authority of Bryan County and triples as King of the North); and the Rev. Lawrence Butler, PMFL spiritual advisor.

With four misses are former Bryan County News Assistant Editor Ted O’Neil, who now heads up our Michigan Bureau; B.J. Clark, a big wheel in Pembroke American Legion Post 164 and our chief meteorologist; and Mike Clark, who has tractor part groupies out there just waiting on him to pop the clutch on the “m” word.

District 5 Commissioner Dr. Gene Wallace, Dentist, retired; and Pembroke City Administrator Alex Floyd have five misses each and are thus bringing up the rear. But if there’s one constant about the PMFL, it’s that I’m usually in last place before frost gets on the pumpkin and makes B.J. mad enough to do his frosted pumpkin challenge dance. It’s on youtube. Week three picks: Florida vs. Ole Miss: Alex, Bob and your’s truly take the Lane Kiffin-led Rebels in an upset. Everybody else picks the Gators.

Army vs. Cincinnati: Me, Bob and Noah take Jeff Monken’s Black Knights. The rest go with a team from Ohio.

North Carolina State vs. Virginia Tech: Everybody not known as smart as me and Noah and the Rev. Butler takes Virginia Tech. We know better. Wolfpack, baby.

Georgia Southern vs. Louisiana: B.J., Bob, Mike and Gene pick the Iggles, who desperately need to get past that debacle of a win over Campbell; the rest of us pick the Cajuns.

Texas vs. Texas Tech: Alex and Gene “The Human Lima Bean” Wallace take the Red Raiders. Hook ‘Em Horns, say the rest of us. Burnt orange is the way orange ought to look, by the way. Not that traffic barrel stuff adorning Clemson High School.

Georgia vs. Arkansas: We all take UGA. I do so under protest. For the uninitiated, I’m from South Carolina and thus was born with a natural aversion to Vince Dooley, Buck Belue and all the gassy UGAs that ever ate a can of Alpo, then hunkered down and fertilized the green green grass at Sanford Stadium before falling asleep in the first quarter.

South Carolina vs. Tennessee: The Gamecocks now have a giant bronze statue of the patriotic creature for which the noble teams at USC are named. The Fighting Gamecock. When the sun catches it just right, the statue looks like sweet victory. Byt the way, everybody but Dawnne picks the Gamecocks. But then she’s a yankee.

Other games this week include Kansas vs. Baylor and Mike Gundy’s mullet. Plus, the Noles and Canes.

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