Chamblee54

At about three o’clock sunday afternoon, the sun came out. It had rained cats, dogs, and snakes, with the occasional octopus thrown in for political correction. PG and Uzi needed to get out, but were wary of getting caught in a storm. More precipitation was predicted.
The opportunity to get out was overwhelming, and Uzi made his way to PG’s place. Going down Clairmont Road, the conversation touched on the usual forbidden subjects, to the peril of everyone’s mental health. PG had decided that the beltline was the place to be, and soon found a familiar parking spot. The beltline still has lots of parking, if you are sure to lock your door.
Uzi did not want to get too far away. The first stop was a restroom. Of course, the beltline does not have these, nor any hidden shrubbery. At the North Avenue end, the troops went down Angier Springs, toward Shasta’s place. PG was reluctant to go on private property, and found a pair of 53 foot trailers. They provided enough discretion to deliver the merchandise.
There was a band playing at the Masquerade. Whether it would be worth paying to see was a moot point, as it was more than sufficient for background sounds. There were dark clouds on the southern horizon, and Uzi wanted to get back to the vehicle.
Things went well until the Freedom Parkway. PG had opposed the construction of the highway, but that was long ago. Evidently, the highway wanted some revenge. As PG walked underneath it, he was taking pictures, and not looking at the ground. His feet got caught in a section of old roots, and into the gravel he fell. The camera got the worst of it. It is probably not good for very much any more.
As he got up, and examined his body for anything broken, some small drops of rain fell. A decision was made to walk faster. The vehicle was on Irwin Street, and was reached just when the raindrops got too big to ignore. It could have been worse.

As you may have heard, there was an explosives incident at the Boston Marathon. The innertubes have been full of support for Boston. It is a contrast from the reaction to the Centennial Park bombing during the Atlanta Olympics.
It is nearly seventeen years since that July evening. After nine eleven, things are different, or so people say. With the rise of the intercom, the balance of message to medium has been oven more lopsided. There are billions of people looking for expression, and only so many cat videos. When a horrible event happens, you can show your solidarity with those affected.
The Boston Marathon is a longstanding tradition, and will continue. The Atlanta Olympics was a one time deal, which is just fine. While people rush in to support Boston, there was a lot of I-told-you-so going on the Saturday morning after the Atlanta blast. A lot of people were expecting the Atlanta Olympics to be a disaster. The bombing was confirmation that picking Atlanta was a bad idea.
The reaction of authorities is a bit different this time. There are surveillance cameras everywhere now, and suspects were found. Hopefully there will be sufficient evidence to convict Mr. Tsarnaev, if indeed he is guilty. (Spell check suggestion for Tsarnaev: Tsarina)
By contrast, a security guard was found to blame the Atlanta bombings on. PG lived near the Buford Highway apartment residence of Richard Jewell, and saw the dozens of TV camera trucks in the parking lot. (That was one of the few Olympic events that PG saw.) Mr. Jewell was cleared, but had his life ruined. He died in 2007.

In the time between 1980 and 1994, if you lived in Atlanta you heard about Lewis Grizzard. Some people loved him. Some did not. He told good old boy stories about growing up in rural Georgia. Many of them were enjoyable. He also made social and political commentaries, which upset a few people.
PG had mixed feelings about Lewis. The stories about Kathy Sue Loudermilk and Catfish were funny. His opinions about gays, feminists, and anything non redneck could get on your nerves. His column for the fishwrapper upset PG at least twice a week.
In 1982, Lewis (he reached the level of celebrity where he was known by his first name only) wrote a column about John Lennon. Lewis did not understand why Mr. Ono was such a big deal. PG cut the column out of the fishwrapper, and put it in a box. Every few years, PG would be looking for something, find that column, and get mad all over again.
The New Georgia Encyclopedia has a page about Lewis, which expresses some of these contradictions. If Grizzard’s humor revealed the ambivalence amid affluence of the Sunbelt South, it reflected its conservative and increasingly angry politics as well. He was fond of reminding fault-finding Yankee immigrants that “Delta is ready when you are,” and, tired of assaults on the Confederate flag, he suggested sarcastically that white southerners should destroy every relic and reminder of the Civil War (1861-65), swear off molasses and grits, drop all references to the South, and begin instead to refer to their region as the “Lower East.” Grizzard also wore his homophobia and hatred for feminists on his sleeve, and one of the last of his books summed up his reaction to contemporary trends in its title, Haven’t Understood Anything since 1962 and Other Nekkid Truths (1992).
In the end, which came in 1994, when he was only forty-seven, the lonely, insecure, oft-divorced, hard-drinking Grizzard proved to be the archetypal comic who could make everyone laugh but himself. He chronicled this decline and his various heart surgeries in I Took a Lickin’ and Kept on Tickin’, and Now I Believe in Miracles (1993), published just before his final, fatal heart failure.
As you may have discerned, Lewis McDonald Grizzard Jr. met his maker on March 20, 1994. He was 47. There was a valve in his heart that wasn’t right. The good news is that he stayed out of the army. At the time, Vietnam was the destination for most enlistees. The bad news is that his heart problems got worse and worse, until it finally killed him.
Sixteen years later, PG found a website, Wired for Books. It is a collection of author interviews by Don Swaim, who ran many of them on a CBS radio show called Book Beat. There are two interviews with Lewis Grizzard. The first one was done to promote My Daddy Was a Pistol and I’m a Son of A Gun. This was the story of Lewis Grizzard Senior, who was another mixed bag.
PG found himself listening to this chat, and wondered what he had been missing all those years. The stories and one liners came flowing out like the Chattahoochee going under the perimeter highway. Daddy Grizzard was a soldier, who went to war in Europe and Korea. The second one did something to his mind, and he took to drinking. He was never quite right the rest of his life. His son from adored him anyway. When you put yourself in those loafers for a while, you began to taste the ingredients in that stew we called Lewis Grizzard.
PG still remembers the anger that those columns caused … he has his own story, and knows when his toes are stepped on. The thing is, after listening to this show, PG has an idea of why Lewis Grizzard wrote the things that he did. Maybe PG and Lewis aren’t all that different after all.
The pictures for this feature are from The Library of Congress. While picking out the pictures, PG listened to the other Lewis Grizzard show with Don Swaim. They both have last names that are often mispronounced. When Lewis wondered where Klansmen get those pointy hats… at the KKK mart, perhaps… PG had to stop the broadcast and write a postscript. This is a repost.