Tom Bobblehead was steaming mad — and that was a very good thing.
Bobblehead, intrepid reporter for Stinkwater Springs’ only weekly newspaper, the Stinkwater SUNSHINE, had spent a considerable share of the past five years attending planning meetings of the Great Geothermal Greenhouse Growing Group (GGGGG), a fiercely New Age gang of local business owners and politicians intent upon locating a “geothermal greenhouse complex and massage clinic” in the middle of Bicentennial Park, overlooking the San Juanita River in downtown Stinkwater.
The town itself derives its name from a collection of hot springs which flow year round, and which emit an odor some have described as “rotten eggs cooked in a broth of road-killed skunk.” The town has been trying for several decades to find a way to capitalize on this resource.
Contacts with perfume industry representatives have thus far proven inconclusive, though a German feminist firm has reportedly expressed interest in marketing a line of so-called “defensive deodorants”.
The geothermal greenhouse complex was the brainchild (to use a colorful, though perhaps not completely accurate, term) of Stinkwater’s 30-year mayor Frank “The Boss” Avocado, a man not normally known to be fiercely New Age. But to paraphrase an old adage, “You can pick your friends, and you can pick your nose, but a geothermal greenhouse gathers its own moss.”
Two months after proposing the geothermal complex, mayor Avocado had hosted a “groundbreaking ceremony” at the proposed greenhouse site, and — surrounded by some hand-picked friends and political supporters — had thrust a gold-painted shovel into the scraggly grass of Bicentennial Park. The blade of the shovel promptly broke off its handle, and the gathered crowd broke into embarrassed laughter — which subsided very quickly when Avocado pulled a pocket knife from his trousers and fell to his knees, stabbing the grass repeatedly while emitting an unusual choking sound.
The broken shovel was apparently an omen, because — despite the upbeat and optimistic news articles dutifully composed by reporter Bobblehead and published weekly in the Stinkwater SUNSHINE over the next five years — the Great Geothermal Greenhouse Growing Group could boast no luck cultivating any government grants or even local business support for their innovative project, even though the mayor and his hand-picked friends had certainly engaged in a considerable amount of boasting.
 Now, after five years of fruitless effort, the group had reached a fork in the road. The long-term lease agreement with the Town of Stinkwater Springs included a provision that required the group “show some kind of results, even if unimpressive” within the first five years of the project, or else see their lease expire.
To address that impending five-year deadline, the GGGGG had come up with a plan: Build a ten-foot by ten-foot “greenhouse-like structure” in the middle of Bicentennial Park, and thereby secure the continuation of the long-term lease with the Town.
SUNSHINE reporter Bobblehead was not happy with this solution, apparently. In a rather uncharacteristic fashion, he wrote up a news report that openly criticized the very group upon which he’d been lavishing shameless praise for the past five years.
Here are a couple of revealing paragraphs from Bobblehead’s blistering Stinkwater SUNSHINE news story about a recent GGGGG meeting at the Avocado Community Center.
“In response to a statement that the proposed ‘geothermal greenhouse’ would in fact contain no geothermal heating system, the SUN staff asked mayor Avocado if the GGGGG board had stuck its collective head ‘where the sun don’t shine.’
The mayor responded matter-of-factly that the ‘greenhouse-like structure’ would be mainly heated by solar power, except during the winter months when, unfortunately, the crops would all freeze to death.
‘We’ve placed the greenhouse-like structure in the middle of Bicentennial Park exactly because the sun does shine there,’ the mayor stated, by way of clarification.
“The SUN staff remained unconvinced by this explanation.
“The SUN staff then endeavored to convince the GGGGG board that ‘a geothermal greenhouse must, by definition, include geothermal ... something or other.’
The board then claimed that government funding regulations ‘don’t actually REQUIRE geothermal projects to contain any geothermal features, but that such projects can meet minimum requirements simply by including the word “geothermal” in the project name.’ The SUN staff left the meeting at that point, and paid an emergency visit to the Porcelain Goddess, where he chucked his Cheerios.”
The SUNSHINE reporter’s version of the GGGGG meeting’s conclusion, however, did not reveal the most intriguing part of the story. In fact, the discussion between Bobblehead and the board ended on a positive note, despite the reporter’s sudden departure. As Bobblehead was leaving the room, one of the board members commented, “Wow. I’ve never seen Tom get so heated up, about anything.”
That comment elicited a related remark from another GGGGG board member, “We should set up a desk inside the greenhouse for Tom. He could heat our greenhouse just with the steam coming out of his ears.”
A request for quantification of the heat emanating from reporter Bobblehead's ears brought an estimate, from local civil engineer Drew Bridges, of “not less that 3,000 BTUs per hour”.
“You could probably grow tomatoes year round,” Bridges suggested.
A few minutes later, the board had approved a motion to install a desk and telephone inside the proposed greenhouse-like structure, and had obtained, via cell phone, a verbal promise from SUN publisher Candy Sweetheart to assign reporter Bobblehead to that desk during the winter months.
As a final step, the board voted unanimously to include in its pending grant applications, the following revised definition:
“GEOTHERMAL: Deriving its heating powers from heating powers from natural mineral springs, latent or active underground wells, or other natural sources of heat and/or hot air.” |