Howdy folks,
I’ve been asked by my friend and neighbor of 48 years, FG, to contribute a weekly “happenings” column of events here at my new home. My new home is a strange and wonderful place. It is a place with barely any football but several pick-up volleyball games. It is place with no TV or radio, but with VHS tapes containing all of the previous week's NFL and NCAA football games. My new home is a cold, flat, harsh place. But it is a fair place.
My Name is Jerry and I live at the South Pole.
Yes readers, The South Pole. I live in a tent behind Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. I moved here nearly three weeks ago after wanting and waiting since January 26, 1997.
Although it takes considerable effort to keep up with events in the National Football League while living here on Station, I continue to find myself creeping through the back alleys here in the land of the midnight sun in order to get my fix; My fix of the Green Bay Packers. I swore I wouldn’t follow the events of the world I left behind. Not the news, not the sports, not even Brangalina. However, yesterday I found myself bedridden with some sort of Antarctic plague and found out not only that the Packers had achieved great victory over Tom Landry and Tony Romo but that Angelina is back with her old lesbian fling… and Brad is furious!
As I lay in bed yesterday suffering from “the Crud” as is know here, I contemplated how it was that my beloved Pack could have gone from losing to the Suckaneers (a bit of info it took me 4 days to learn and almost caused me to run out into the polar desert), to beating the 4-win-straight Cowboys. I couldn’t help but wonder if the same thing that is helping me get better helped the Pack get better.
What is that thing? That thing is Beaver.
Beaver is one of the chefs here at the Pole galley, an integral part of a staff led by Chef James Brown.
Beaver helped me get better today. After a long and tiring walk from my tent to the station I pulled open the huge, heavy, Hercules model freezer doors that loom at every entrance and exit and crossed into the heated hallways of Amundsen-Scott. No sooner after I hung my coat, hat, goggles and everything else it takes not to die in the closet did I run in to Beaver. Seeing my weak, frail, body seemed to have an effect on the old chap. He stopped to say hello but all I could muster from my needle-lined throat was “Chicken soup, do you ever make chicken soup?”
“Of Course” exclaimed a riled-up Beaver as he ripped off a piece of cardboard from what appeared to be some sort of semi-important box nearby and wrote chicken soup in large sharpie letters. Beaver then went on his way proclaiming “Tomorrow... lunch… No, chicken soup… you just let me know and I’ll start breakin’ legs.”
As would be expected, I was filled with joy knowing that the one thing I needed more than anything to get better was on its way. And that at the drop of a hat a fellow Polie (as we are known) was willing to help me get better.
This story from my life here at the South Pole again made me wonder. What or who is the Packers’ Beaver? Who was the Beaver that helped the Pack go from black hole to back home? Who made the chicken soup that held that bunch of Secessionists from a dustbowl called Dallas to just 7 garbage points?
We may not find out who the Beaver of the Packers is anytime soon, but we sure as sugar better hope they continue to have a Beaver willing to help them get better. Because as I learned in Antarctica, everybody needs a Beaver if they want to get better.
-Jerry from the Pole
aka Jerry the Antarctican
