The gas company has sent along another lease for the rights to what bubbles under the shale embedded in our hillsides.
Any day now we'll be millionaires.
Any day now.
It's going to change my life, and don't think I'm not ready. No longer will I have to wait for a table on a Friday night at the Union Grill. Pete "I've Got the Beat" will play my favorite song every morning on WJPA without me having to call the request line. Soon, our horses will be shod in silver; our hens will wear platinum tiaras.
Looking good, girls.
My mom, a Depression child, used to talk of the day her "ship would come in." I'm not waiting for a ship, but for the big trucks to arrive, bringing with them workers and wells and money, lots of money. If it all works out, I will be paid to do nothing but surrender some acreage.
Pimp my tractor.
There's no guarantee they're coming, of course. We've only got hope. In many ways, it's no more inevitable than the Powerball. That doesn't mean the specter of riches beneath our pastures doesn't change my attitude about things.
Work, for instance.
Gone are the days I once lived, when a snide comment or misplaced criticism tossed by the boss would send me to the gun cabinet with bad intentions. I am now a smiling, contented soul who wants nothing more than to get along with his fellow worker, a productive cog in the great machine, ready, willing and able to take my place in the corporate line.
Why?
Someday soon the gas company will be coming to call. I can feel it, just as assuredly as I can feel a nag hitting the three-quarter post and heading for the wire at The Meadows.
No, she didn't win.
But Dave Palone going to the whip too late doesn't mean the gas company isn't coming.
It's kind of like Santa. There's no logical reason for a jolly fat man to visit each December and toss presents down my chimney. But, as has been proven, if I get myself on the list of good boys and girls, he shows up, he tramps all over my rooftop, he eats my cookies and he pays off like a West Virginia Café.
I'm being a good boy.
The gas company sees you when you're sleeping. They know when you're awake. And mostly, they know when you have about a hundred acres or so of subterranean shale that needs to be broken into pieces, the gas pumped from its bowels.
There's no proof that gas exists on our farm or that the company won't follow the pattern of companies before them and find a way to rip us off. I have questions about all of this, of course.
Legal questions.
Like this one: Does Rolls-Royce make a hay baler?
To hear Scott Paulsen's column, visit www.observer-reporter.com. He can be heard each weekday afternoon from 3 to 7 p.m. on 1250 ESPN Radio.