While We're All Adding Up How Pissed We Are...

Let me take a moment to share my mother's latest get-rich-quick scheme. This one, unfortunately, has the potential to go wrong in a very realistic way. I get a call from her the other day--she usually calls about every 2 weeks or so to bore me to tears or infuriate me, depending on her mood--and she starts going on about the possibility of finding natural gas on our land. This is a realistic possiblity, and we get propositioned every few years or so (always in the fall) to do something with our timber, mineral or natural gas options. We've always said no.

So as she's explaining the situation to me, which takes about 10 minutes, given all my questions, she keeps using all the usual inducements to get my approval on the matter. Which usually means she's already done something about it. My favorite is when she'll say, "Of course, I'd split any money that I got out of it with you girls." My mother knows enough to know that I'm the one who asks the hardest questions, but not enough to recognize that I have never one time in my life been swayed by motives of money over some other social good. Sigh.

I said, "Maybe you should run this by a lawyer to make sure there aren't any loopholes you've missed."

"Well," she hesitated, "I've already signed."

My heart just fell. For all the years she's spent bitching about how the coal companies came in and raped the land for mineral rights and signed people's lives away for a few dollars a share, she turns around and does the same damned thing. The lease is perpetual as long as there is gas under the ground. If they find any, it will likely outlast her lifetime, mine, and that of Dante's children. She assures me that it's minimal damage to the environment, all of it's underground in pipes, etc. She assures me that it won't affect the water tables or anything like that. How she knows is beyond me. I just can't get over that she signed the rights to our land away, just like that.

She said over and over again, "But they don't have the land, Virgil. They don't own the land."

So finally I just had to say, "Mom, where in the world do you think the gas is?" We won't be able to do anything to/with the land that interferes with the extraction of that gas. If that's not partial ownership of the land, I don't know what is.

The land is in her name anyway, not mine or Sister's. It just aggravated me that she would even bother to couch her choice in language that invited me to share in making the decision, when the decision had already been irrevocably made.

Maybe we'll get lucky, and the company won't find any gas on our land. They have up to two years to drill for it to find out. I hope nothing comes of it. It's just not worth it to me.