Lewis County Power Rankings: Hang on to Your Unmentionables, It’s Football Season

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September’s here, which means life is basically back to normal for me: Friday nights are busy, the sports office is hopping, and if I see someone I vaguely know in a non-work setting, they’re going to ask who’s the best at football stuff. It usually goes like this:

Person: “Hey, football season huh?”

Me: (looking at watchless wrist) “Yes.”

Person: “So, tell me, is (local team) good this year?”

Me: “No.”

Person: “Well, see ya later.”

If you think I’m not real compelling in print, you should meet me in person. 

Here’s some power rankings.  

1. Prospective Counselors:  The resignation of former Centralia City Council member Pat Gallagher left a hole on the council that only a living, breathing human being could fill, and by Monday’s filing deadline seven applicants had thrown their heads in the bucket. The remaining City Council has gone through the boring process of selecting a replacement — Max Vogt.

Here’s a few alternatives, should Vogt reverse himself and join the Foreign Legion.

• The Hunger Games.May the odds be forever in your favor! A brutal competition in which all seven are pushed into China Creek. Whosoever should last the longest in the Hub City’s true concrete jungle will be declared the victor! (I’m not advocating a death match, of course, or even fighting, but verbal jabs are certainly encouraged. Just whoever survives with the snakes and raccoons and feral cats and detritus of a thousand misspent nights on the town the longest without saying “Oh God, influence on municipal policy is NOT worth smelling like a neglected diaper!”)



• The Willy Wonka. A lengthy tour of Centralia, led by a creepy old man (no shortage of those around here), during which the candidates will be eliminated by their own vices. “Oh, he’s been crushed under an antique davenport! … He’s disappeared into the Tower! … He’s become tattooed beyond recognition! …” and so on. Then at the end the old man kicks the bucket and gives whoever was still with the tour group the golden scepter or whatever and they rule the city. (I haven’t actually seen the end of either of the Willy Wonka movies.)

• An open debate, done entirely in questions-from-the-audience format. No microphones and only the most gentle moderation; the candidates just have to shout down each other to answer the audience’s questions. It’ll be judged by a five-person panel that shall include, for reasons beyond explanation, a third-grader; a garbage man; someone legally prohibited from voting; the first person to walk by the front door of City Hall 10 minutes before the debate starts; and a scarecrow. 

 

2. Threshers: The Toledo Threshing Bee was last weekend, which is a chance for people to experience old-timey farm work with steam-powered engines and tractors and the like. Organizers think involvement among youngsters is down, which prompts me to wonder what my generation’s version of the threshing bee is going to be. When I’m in my 70s, am I going to help organize a festival where kids can sit at desktop computers and make calls on a landline phone and pretend to work? 

“Look here, sonny, when I was your age we had to type words into Google WITH OUR OWN FINGERS!”

“What’s Google, old man? Oh never mind, my eye-implant screen assistant just told me.”

Maybe the self-driving car will have taken hold by then, to the point that my ability to operate an automobile will be held in the same high regard as fixing a steam engine. 

“See, son, back then EVERYONE had to drive their own cars, and dial their own phones! And doing both at the same time was illegal!” Some day, everyone old enough to be considered a handy, jack-of-all-trades by my generation is going to be dead, and everyone my age is going to be thought of as useful because we can still work a steering wheel and take the battery out of a laptop when it’s on the fritz. It’s the circle of life. 

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Aaron VanTuyl is the Chronicle sports editor and a columnist.