| By Alvin Engelke
 By Alvin Engelke
alvinengelke@hotmail.com
Rev. S. E. Cooper, Jr., age 90, passed away after an extended illness. The son of Samuel Edgar & Lucy (Deemie) Webb Cooper he was a veteran of World War II and a retired rural route mail carrier and cattleman as well as a former Methodist minister. He is survived by his wife Helen "Peggy" Cooper who nursed Edgar through a number of illnesses that otherwise would have laid him out years ago.
The mercury fell below zero in the Creston area and there was more snow. On the coldest night the power went off causing heat tapes to cease to function. As a result the water in several residents' homes changed phase and ceased to flow. While the local area only received a few inches, elsewhere in the nation there were several feet.
Earlier much of the citrus in California was frozen and records were set in many places. In spite of all the recent weather many politicians, especially those newly in power in Washington have subscribed to the pseudoscience of "manmade global warming" as this can give them more power and authority in spite of the fact that meteorologists make it clear that it is all hokum. Little Johnny D. Rockefeller IV even threatened the CEO of Exxon, one of his family companies if he didn't shut up and talk PC. Ordinary people are not supposed to know about solar storms, ocean currents, the jet stream, volcanic activity, the shrinking of the ice caps on Mars, etc.
The powers that be, including Mrs. Pelosi are to be given a jet big enough to have a wet bar, sleeping rooms and spaces to haul big campaign donors and an extended family but the peasants should willingly go back to walking or riding mass transit. These are the same folks who did away with the street cars some decades back. Ox carts are likely bad too since the oxen would burp methane which would pollute.
Icy roads have caused many wrecks and on Friday Donna Sue Ferrell & Bob Phillips collided along the old Pell place. Wreckers from both Roger Patterson & Rick Mason had to be summonsed and Rick found one of Godfrey L. Cabot's old metal gas lines causing a flat on his wrecker. Neither he nor Roger had a spare so another wrecker had to be called, all of which caused a protracted blockage of the Richardsonville road.
The price of local Penn grade crude was $55.50/bbl.
Mr. & Mrs. Eddie Yoak, Chad Satterfield, Jon Hildreth and John Stone were among the local oil men who attended the winter meeting of the Independent Oil & Gas Assoc. down at the Mouth of the Elk. W. E. "Emory" Smith won a first place reclamation award from the DEP, a signal honor for Calhoun County.
While Oklahoma City based Chesapeake Energy has been making a lot of noise about the class action lawsuit it would seem very unlikely that they will not pull up their gas wells and go back out west as they operate under the very same laws there except that royalties are higher in that part of the world & other costs are much higher.
A spokesperson for the firm has announced the location for a new Trenton/Black River well in Roane County. It was said to be the result of the 58,000 acres of 3-D seismic that was done there in 2006. Also after the 60 square miles of three dimensional seismic is completed along the Roane/Jackson line there is a big prospect in Clay County and another in Fayette County. It is generally reckoned that the "deep" wells cost about $3 million each although they may pay out in a few months.
In a speech down at the Mouth of the Elk the governor indicated that he would work to enact legislation that would allow out of state companies to do legally what Columbia, Chesapeake and others did improperly. Only a few months back a class action suit was resolved against East Resources over their taking severance taxes from the royalty. Their excuse was that Pennzoil, part of the Standard Oil Trust, did it that way. Chesapeake's new leases allow them to deduct severance taxes and dozens of other items from royalties with no recourse to local landowners.
It was learned the Eastern American Energy was not planning on a coalbed methane project in Webster County but is seriously planning on developing a gas field there even though, presently, there are no pipelines to take the natural gas to market.
Question. How far is it from Houston (mission control) to Orlando, Florida? Answer. It Depends.
It was learned that Exxon, the flagship company of the Rockefeller family, is actively purchasing choice corn land in Midwestern states. According to a company source they plan to drop oil prices by manipulation and cause the farmer owned corn liquor distilleries (ethanol plants) to go bankrupt. Then Exxon can purchase them and stress the need for alternative fuel (even if it takes 1 ½ gallons of gasoline to make one gallon of ethanol) and make some more fortunes to make sure that all the little Rockefeller children get only the best vegetables and have shoes to wear. Family members who aren't clever enough to work in the business will continue to be sent to West Virginia & Arkansas to play politics with family supplied "advisors". | 
