Author: Darrell Huckaby

“Go tell it; Jesus is born!”

I have been waiting 11 months to be able to sing those lines without feeling guilty about rushing the season. Why do we have to wait for the season of advent to sing joyous songs about the birth of Christ? The good news of God’s gift to the world is significant 365 days a year, after all.

My next-door neighbor growing up was Miss Mae Hardman, who left Porterdale to teach at Rabun Gap Nacoochie School the year after I left to go to college. She still lives in those North Georgia Mountains around Clayton. Miss Mae’s favorite hymn, no matter what the time of year, was “Joy to the World,” and she often complained to me that the folks at the Presbyterians wouldn’t acquiesce to her wishes and sing it year round.

I tried to get her to go with me to the Methodist Church by telling her that we sang it every week, but she knew better.

Well, I love Christmas music, both sacred and secular, and I look forward all year to the moment when the person on WSB hits the high note of Amazing Grace and the “Rich’s Great Tree,” which is now sponsored by Macy’s, at Lenox Square, bursts into light. That is the signal, at our house, to let the Christmas music begin.

I will admit here and now that I am a sucker for buying Christmas albums — although they are called CDs now and even they are about to become obsolete, or so I am told. You let a company produce a new album with a compilation of my favorite songs by my favorite artists and I will buy that sucker, with little regard to how much it costs — even though I have all the songs by all the artists on other discs. I know, I know. It’s just a thing.

My favorite Christmas album, and my favorite song, differs from day to day and year to year. Willie Nelson is a perennial favorite, though. I can close my eyes and just picture Willie sitting by a fireplace all alone, the rest of the room dark, or maybe illuminated by candlelight, playing his battered guitar and singing “O Little Town of Bethlehem.” It puts me in a melancholy mood every time. My favorite cut is “Pretty Paper,” which is also the name of the album.

While programs such as No Child Left Behind was well intended and did achieve some good things, it also did some damage to the educational system in that educators went into panic mode and were so focused on children passing tests that creativity was lost in the process as was a supportive school climate. sildenafil in usa In general, people who are diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis should avoid: Fried foods and baked goods that typically contain trans fats and high order cialis pills levels of sodium. These people can opt for soft table of the production, these soft tab are blue in color, looks attractive and compel you. pfizer viagra australia http://cute-n-tiny.com/cute-animals/sneaky-baby-and-cat/ A man who is not potent to have sex can build such rigid erection by cute-n-tiny.com viagra 100 mg the use of an essential medicine known as zenegra. “Pretty paper, pretty ribbons of blue, wrap your presents to your darling from you. Pretty pencils to write, ‘I love you’ … ”

That always puts me to mind of Elvis, of course, and I am digging through the stack of CDs looking for something that has “Blue Christmas” on it.

When I was a kid we didn’t have many records, but we did have a Bing Crosby Christmas LP and I have it on disc and make sure it gets plenty of play time this time of year. I even have a scratchy old copy of the Ames Brothers’ “There’ll Always be a Christmas,” that my favorite converted Southerner, Danna Gutknecht, gave me several years ago. I’ve already played it a couple of times this season.

I like playing my personal recordings better than I like listening to the all-Christmas-all-the-time stations. When you listen to those, you hear songs that will drive you crazy after the first two or three days of advent. Let me give you a for-instance of three. I don’t care if I never hear another recording of Burl Ives singing “Holly Jolly Christmas.” I know. I know. It is a classic. It was fine the first four or five thousand times I heard it, but I am over it now. Ditto those stupid dogs barking “Jingle Bells,” and I don’t want to hear about your grandma getting run over by a reindeer, either. As a matter of fact, “Deck the Halls,” has lost a little of its luster, too, although I will still find myself breaking into it every now and then, particularly while I am decorating the staircase and doorways of our house with greenery.

I do opt for the radio dial every once in awhile, hoping to hear one or two of the songs that I don’t have recordings of — like the Ray Stevens version of the Ahab the Arab Christmas song. That’s the one where Clyde the Camel pulls Rudolph’s sleigh. We probably won’t hear that one this year. Politically incorrect, don’t you know.

As the season progresses, I will move away from “Silver Bells” and “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot like Christmas” toward “The First Noel,” “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” and Miss Mae’s favorite, “Joy to the World.” As Christmas Eve approaches there will be more “Silent Night” and “O Holy Night” renditions on my personal airwaves.

I love this time of year, y’all. It’s Christmas in Dixie. I like that song, too — even if the group that does it is called Alabama.

I can’t help but laugh at the commercials the big box department stores have been running lately, the ones encouraging everybody to “winterize” their houses. Yep, winter is on the way and we’ve had some right chilly mornings already, but I don’t think there are that many folks around who actually remember how uncomfortable a cold North Georgia winter can be.

I ran into a couple of my cousins the other day and we began reminiscing about the good old days and somehow winter came up. I have a lot of precious memories of growing up in Porterdale. Winter isn’t really one of them — not for the most part.

Oh, there was the occasional surprise snow storm — yes, every once in a while something would slip by old Guy Sharpe — but other than that, winter never was my favorite time of year.

Let me paint you a picture of the little mill village house in which I was raised. It had four rooms. In fact, it was a perfect square. There were two doors in each room. If you entered through the front door, which few people did, you walked into the living room. There was a couch against the near wall, my daddy’s recliner was against the wall on the left and there was a television, eventually, in the corner.

If you walked through that room you would enter the kitchen, where most of the entertaining was done. There was a sink on the far wall, a table in the middle of the room, and a cupboard in the near corner. The two rooms on the left side of the house were bedrooms. The back bedroom was my parents’ and had a double bed, a chifferobe and a chest of drawers. All of the family’s clothes — all of the family’s clothes — were kept in that one chifferobe and chest of drawers.

My sister and I shared the front bedroom. We had twin beds that Mama bought used from her first-grade school teacher, Sybil Ellington — who would also be my sister’s first-grade school teacher. We had our own chest of drawers, eventually, but we didn’t have enough clothes to fill it up.

The bathroom? It was on the back porch — eventually — and that was an upgrade.
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We didn’t have carpets on our floors. We did have a linoleum rug on our kitchen floor. The rest of the house was bare wood. There were no lamps. A bare light bulb hung down from the center of each room, with a string to pull to turn the light on. In the living room there was a gas heater which was supposed to keep the living room and kitchen warm. We kept the doors to the bedrooms closed, which didn’t matter because Daddy turned off the heater at bedtime anyway. The house was a bit drafty — it was up on brick pillars with no underpinning — so the wind blew underneath it, and he lived in fear that the pilot light would blow out, filling the house with noxious gas.

How did we keep warm? Quilts, of course. We would bury ourselves under four or five or six home-made quilts. Nowadays folks sell such quilts for a couple thousand dollars apiece. We used them for cover and took them on picnics and to the drive-in and lay on them to work under the car. You get tucked in under four or five of those heavy quilts and you weren’t going anywhere. On really cold nights Mama would heat bricks on the stove and wrap them in towels and put them next to our feet when she tucked us in.

You didn’t dare drink anything close to bedtime because answering nature’s call meant one of two things. Walking across ice cold bare floors and going outside to the bathroom or using the “pee pot” under the bed. Neither was a very viable option. You could freeze walking across those floors and going outside — if you could even lift the quilts enough to get out of bed — and the last person to use the pot had to empty it the next morning. That was never a pleasant task.

When we finally did wake up, we would get dressed in a hurry — let me tell you — and then stand by the newly lit heater trying desperately to get warm. Then it was time to put on our sweater and our jacket and our gloves and our caps and get ready to walk to school. There is no colder place on earth than the Yellow River Bridge at 7:30 in the morning on a cold January day.

When the weather was really cold, which it often was, we would have to leave the water dripping in the sink to try and prevent the water from freezing, which it often did, even though Daddy “wrapped” the pipes with newspapers at the first sign of cold weather. At least once or twice a winter the pipes would freeze and burst and we would be without water until it was our turn for Oscar Harold Jackson, the Bibb plumber, to come to our house and fix the pipes.

Yeah. I remember winter — and I am so very thankful for a thermostat that stays on 70, warm carpet on my floors and a bathroom that is about 12 feet away from my bed. Come ahead Old Man Winter. We are ready for you at my house.

I like the rain. My mama didn’t. She was as afraid of a bad cloud as anybody I ever knew. Not me. I enjoy the rain — and the stormier the better, as long as I am not in harm’s way.

Sometimes we know the rain is coming. In fact, nowadays, with tweets and texts and auto-alerts and 24-hour cable news and, of course, the WSB weather team, we usually know when and where the storms are going to hit long before they actually happen. That’s good for practical purposes, but sometimes I long for the old days when a sudden summer storm would come up out of nowhere.

I will never forget that camp meeting Sunday in 1981 when my lovely wife, Lisa, and I got caught in a sudden summer storm at the spring at Salem Campground. We were drenched. We were soaked to the skin, as they say, and had a delightful time getting all dried out.

I was staying in an old sharecropper’s cabin on the Mississippi Delta once and watched storm clouds gather across unplowed cotton fields that were miles and miles away. I could tell that the storm was going to make a beeline right toward me. It did. I could smell the rain as it moved right across those black fields and ran for shelter just as the heavy drops of water began hitting the ancient tin roof of that old cabin. It was like music to my ears as I lay on the small iron bed, and I could imagine what the previous occupants of the cabin must have thought as they sought shelter from the storms of their life in that same humble dwelling.

When I used to work at Bert Adams Scout Reservation, in a previous life, we had a little campfire skit that we would do from time to time. We would “create” a rainstorm. Everyone would close their eyes and start beating their index fingers together, all at the same time. Three hundred index fingers being pounded together at the same time sounds a lot like the pitter-patter of raindrops just beginning to fall. Then we would do two fingers and then three and four and so forth until the group sounded like a pounding storm.

Then we would make the storm abate by going back down to four fingers and then three and two and so forth. I guess you had to be there to get the full experience, but the next time you have 300 or so Boy Scouts hanging around, give it a try.

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One of the reasons that I like rain so much, and rainstorms in particular — other than the obvious reason that it makes things grow and washes out the atmosphere — is because it reminds me of the power of the Almighty. I am reminded by the thunder and lightning and wind and rain that no matter how much I might like to pretend that I am in control of my own destiny, there is a power much greater than me that is really in charge.

When I was a younger man I would go outside and dance in the rain. If I were hiking through the woods and a storm came up I would keep on hiking. I would laugh at the thunder and dare the lightning bolts to hit me. Now I am older and a bit wiser and have put away the foolish things of childhood. Now I am at least smart enough to come in out of the rain and to seek shelter from the storms of life.

But I still hang on to this simple truth — and it is one that I have shared often with my family and friends. Every time I have ever gotten wet — each and every time — I have gotten dry again eventually. As a matter of fact, I am dry as a bone, right this minute.

I don’t know what storms might be beseeching you right now, but I know where you can find shelter and I know that no matter how hard it might be raining at the moment that, eventually, the rain will stop, the clouds will roll away and the sun will come out — and no matter how wet you might have gotten, you will eventually get dry again.

I like the rain.

On the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, in 1918, the Armistice began, ending World War I — the Great War, which was to have been the “War to End War” and to make the world “Safe for Democracy.” That’s what Woodrow Wilson promised when he got the U.S. involved. He also promised a 1 percent cap on income tax. That didn’t work out, either.

My daddy used to tell me a story about that day in history. He was 6 years old, hoping to live three more weeks to become seven. A flu epidemic was sweeping the whole world, including LaGrange, Ga., where he lived. He was bedridden with the flu when the war ended. Every church bell in LaGrange began to ring at the appointed time and, delirious with fever, he thought that he had died and was hearing the bells of heaven pealing his arrival.

I suppose something like that would make an impression on any 6-year-old boy. Obviously he survived.

Nov. 11 became known as Armistice Day in this country. A lady from Good Hope — just down the road from Athens — was responsible for making the poppy a symbol of remembrance for those who served in France during the war.

Ms. Michael graduated from Lucy Cobb Institute and the Georgia State Teachers College and was on staff at the University of Georgia when America entered the war. I used to teach about her when I was an eighth-grade Georgia history teacher, and I have driven the stretch of U.S. Highway 78 that is named in her honor thousands of times while en route to Athens from my home in Conyers.

After the war, she started wearing a red poppy on her clothes in honor of those service members who fought in the war. She was inspired by the poem “In Flanders Field,” which talks about the poppies growing between the rows of crosses at the military cemetery there. Eventually, because of her efforts, the American Legion Auxiliary began selling silk poppies around Armistice Day to provide funds for assisting disabled veterans–a tradition that still exists.

Of course we have fought many wars since 1918 — too many. Now this day is called Veterans Day and is set aside to honor all the veterans who have fought in all our nation’s wars — and those who have served in time of peace as well.

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Now, that’s a pretty noble calling.

I have never served. Vietnam, my generation’s war, wasn’t particularly appealing politically. When my lottery number was picked — 360 out of 365 — I knew that I would be allowed to spend the years of my late teens and early 20s safely ensconced on this side of the water, enjoying life and liberty and pursuing happiness as I saw fit. Some of the finest people I knew weren’t so lucky. I could have enlisted, of course — but I didn’t.

But let me assure you of this. I appreciated — and still appreciate — those that did. We are losing our World War II vets at a rapid rate and soon Korean War veterans will be quite rare. Our Vietnam era veterans are graying and still facing many physical and emotional problems related to their service. We have lots of vets from Desert Storm and Iraq and the ongoing war in Afghanistan in our midst. No matter our political beliefs — and the Lord knows we have a lot of strong ones these days — we should all be grateful for those who wear and have worn the uniform so that we might continue to live in peace and prosper.

What better time to thank them than the day set aside to honor them — and who better deserves to be honored? You are right. Nobody.

It is a trite expression and good fodder for bumper stickers and posters and the like, but there is also a lot of truth to that old saying. If you were able to read this today, thank a teacher. If you were able to read it in English, thank a veteran.

Semper Fi, Mac. Anchors aweigh. Semper Paratus. Over hill, over dale and off we go into the wild blue yonder. Thank you all for your service to our country.

Happy Halloween, y’all. As we sit and watch the terrible devastation of the Monster Storm and wonder what effect it will have on the nation’s ability to vote next week, I can’t move ahead without commenting on last weekend.

Now that’s what I’m talking about. Just as the 2012 Georgia Bulldogs put an end to loose talk about “old man football” in September, they put an end to talk about a soft defense Saturday night on the banks of the St. Johns River. And speaking of grown men — if you look up the term in the dictionary, you’ll find a photograph of Jarvis Jones — or at least you should.

The defense hunkered, didn’t they?

Over and over and over again. Every time they absolutely had to have a stop, they got a stop — or a turnover — and I lost track of how many times the game was stopped to tend to Florida players who were knocked groggy by the hard-hitting players in the red helmets and jerseys — and aren’t we glad we didn’t have to resort to wearing black uniforms or silver spacesuits to get these guys ready to play? They used pride and want-to for motivation — not gimmicks. The result was that we saw the darnedest bunch of Dawgs getting after Florida’s No.2-rated athletes than we had seen in a long time.

How ’bout them Dawgs!

It was a great week for me. I don’t know when I’ve enjoyed a roadtrip more. I went to Jacksonville last Wednesday and got to watch the whole week unfold. My lovely wife, Lisa, and I, were among the advance party at The Landing last Wednesday evening and we watched the madness as RV City slowly filled up on Thursday. Thursday night, I had the rare privilege of speaking to the Jacksonville Bulldog Club meeting, and I have never attended a finer event — or seen a more fired-up bunch of Bulldogs in my life. At the Jacksonville Bulldog Club it really is great to be a Gator hater.

Plus none of my fears about having to host a tailgate for about 65 people in a hurricane came to fruition. We had a little wind down by the river, but not enough to dampen anyone’s enthusiasm — and for the record — jean shorts outnumbered mullets 3-1 in this year’s official tally.

Then there was the game, and what a game it was. I have heard it called boring and ugly and all sorts of names by people who don’t really understand the American South, but what we actually had was simple an old-fashioned SEC slobberknocker where neither side was going to take any prisoners — or show any mercy to the other side.

Did we make too many penalties? Oh, Lord yes. But emotions were high and the other side, running on the same adrenaline as our bunch, made about as many as we did. And really? A 15-yarder on Todd Gurley for that little baby gator chomp? Give me a break. I’ve seen Tim Tebow do the jaws of life thing on the same field without being flagged.
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I loved the enthusiasm of the Georgia crowd and I sensed from the opening kickoff — the one where the Florida player was upended at his own 16 yard line, that the team and the fans were ready to put the past behind them and play as one on this glorious fall Saturday.

I’m not going to give you Jarvis Jones’s stats because you’ve heard them for two days and have them memorized by now, but he was like a man among boys Saturday — and the rest of Todd Grantham’s defenders were playing to just as high a level. Georgia held the No. 2 team in the country to no touchdowns. That’s enough said. Incredible effort. And the offense did enough to win the game — especially the guy wearing Babe Ruth’s number.

One thing that could have made Saturday’s game a little sweeter: Wouldn’t we all have purely loved to have heard Larry Munson calling that one? “All right, get the picture now. Wind is from the east at 35 miles per hour. It is practically a gale and there is just no telling what might happen here today.”

And I wonder what he would have said on Florida’s final drive. “We just can’t stop them. We’ve stood up over and over and over and we just can’t possibly do it again. They are driving down the field. Are they gonna just wait until the last minute and then just break our hearts?”

But they didn’t. Jarvis Jones slapped the ball out of their arms and we recovered in our endzone and we just broke their hearts. We beat Florida for the second year in a row and Will Muskchump is 0-6 in the WLOCP. So take that Coach Boom.

And I wish I could have been a fly on the wall when the Head Ball Coach at S.C. realized that the team he smashed in the mouth three weeks ago is now the odds-on favorite to repeat as SEC East Champions and return to the Georgia Dome on Dec. 1 — possibly — possibly — with a chance to upset Alabama to earn a spot in the BCS Championship game in Miami.

I stayed in the stadium Saturday night, as I promised I would, until they made me leave. I had lots and lots of company — all wearing red and black and all agreeing on one thing: It really is great to be a Bulldog on a Saturday night.

And thank you Donald Varn. That Bull Gator promised me last winter that if I would get well enough to make the trip to Jacksonville, he would put on red and black and become a Bulldog for a night. The man was true to his word. Glory, glory, indeed.

Remember color crayons? Close your eyes and imagine opening a fresh box. No, seriously. Go ahead and do it. I promise it will come back to you. Can’t you just smell those fresh Crayolas? Remember the original eight colors? They were red, yellow, black, brown, green, blue, orange and violet. Give me a box of those crayons and coloring book — or even a blank piece of paper — and I could keep myself occupied for hours.

No, I didn’t stay between the lines. I still don’t.

Every once in a while my mama would spring for one of the larger boxes that had silver and gray and turquoise and yellow green and lavender and forest green and colors I didn’t recognize. I enjoyed trying to match the colors I encountered in real life with those I found in my 64-count box of Crayola crayons. Of course the crayons didn’t stay in pristine condition for long and they didn’t stay in the original box for long.

My sister and I would use those crayons up. It didn’t take long for them to become so short that we had to peel the paper away to reveal more wax and then the official names — like magenta and sepia and mulberry — were lost to us forever. We had some spirited arguments over questions like, did you color Mickey Mouse’s shirt sea green or pine green or periwinkle. The one Crayola color I never used was plain old pink. I left that one to my sister because everybody knew pink was a girl’s color.

I’ve worn pink every day this week, in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month. My lovely wife, Lisa, and I have been breast cancer awareness advocates for a long time now. Together we have walked hundreds of miles and raised thousands of dollars for breast cancer research. For a long time the “Think Pink” campaign was the only one I was particularly aware of. Over the past couple of years, however, I have become aware that there is a whole rainbow of cancer awareness colors out there — or an entire Crayola box full — and each is extremely important and deserves our attention.

In the U.S. this year there will be 227,000 new cases of breast cancer. That is more than 600 per day. I can now say that I know the fear that goes through each person’s mind when they are first diagnosed, and despite the great strides that medical science is making, we will lose almost 40,000 of those battles this year, so we do, indeed, need to continue to think pink.

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I’m not a fan of yellow, either, but that is the color of bone cancer, and if I need to wear a yellow ribbon to show support for those who are suffering from that disease, I would do so gladly.

Light blue is the color for prostate cancer awareness. I can tell you everything you ever wanted to know about prostate cancer — except how it feels to beat it — and I am working on that as hard as I possibly can.

Purple is for colon cancer — as well as many other maladies — and periwinkle is for stomach and esophageal cancer. I am close to people who have both right now. Gray — as in gray matter, I suppose — is for brain cancer. Green is for kidney cancer. Violet is for Hodgkin’s lymphoma and gold is for childhood cancer. Silver is the color for ovarian cancer and there are many other ribbons for many other maladies and if I have left yours out of the list, I apologize.

Now understand, I am not trying to steal the thunder of the pink month. Just the opposite: We all need to be aware and remain vigilant. I am merely pointing out that there are more colors in the box, and after two harrowing years I want everyone to become aware of as many of them as possible. We want to save the ta-tas and everything else that needs saving and while I am wearing pink this week you might see me wearing any color ribbon, as necessary, on any given day.

There is one flag, however, that I will never raise concerning cancer. I will never raise the white flag. I will never give up, and neither should you. In the words of Churchill, “We must never give up; we must never give up. Never, ever, ever, ever, ever give up.”

I was chatting with my friend Linda Boyd at our Oak Tree Gang tailgate party last Saturday and the talk turned to food. Imagine that! We were literally surrounded by food — in all directions.

I specifically asked Linda if she had a box stuffed away somewhere, filled with her mother-in-law’s recipes. Linda sadly shook her head and said, “No, I’m afraid her recipes didn’t translate very well.” Then she proceeded to explain to me how her mother-in-law cooked candied yams.

“She tried to teach me to cook like she did, but it just wasn’t the same at home. She was going to teach me to make candied yams one day, for instance. Well, she had a big 50 pound sack of sweet potatoes and we sat down and peeled all those potatoes and started slicing them onto this giant pan and then she hefted a 10-pound bag of sugar and sprinkled it all over that big sheet of sweet potatoes and then she took a giant cake of butter that had been sitting at room temperature all morning and spread it all over the sweet potatoes and then started another layer of potatoes …

“She didn’t measure anything,” Linda lamented, adding, “It just didn’t work.”

Now if you are wondering what in the world I am talking about right about now, I will let you in on the rest of the story. Linda Boyd is married to Spencer Boyd. I taught with Spencer at Cousins Middle School during my first tour of duty as an educator. He was one of my childhood heroes. I had watched him play basketball for the Newton Rams when I was a very small child. As a college player Spencer once led the nation in free throw percentage and he is one of the few people ever to best me in a free throw shooting contest.

None of the above is what makes the fact that Linda is married to Spencer relevant to the whole cooking yams story. The fact that Spencer’s mother was Effie Boyd, however, makes the story very relevant.

In case you aren’t from around here, Mrs. Effie Boyd –“Ef,” as her friends called her — operated the restaurant at the Porterdale Hotel for years and years and years. Just ask anybody about how good the food was at the Porterdale Hotel. There was none better — not in these parts and not in the state of Georgia.
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The food was served cafeteria style and people came from all over to enjoy Mrs. Ef Boyd’s fried chicken and country fried steak and chicken and dressing and fresh vegetables. Don’t even get me started on the cobblers. I cannot overstate how well renowned her restaurant was around the American South back in the 1950s and ’60s. Everywhere I speak — and I speak in an awful lot of places — when I mention that I am from Porterdale — and I always mention that I am from Porterdale — someone, or a lot of someones come up to me and want to talk about eating at the Porterdale Hotel. I always tell them, with pride, that I grew up right across the street.

We would sit on the porch when we got home from church on Sundays and marvel at the number of cars lining Highway 81, the road that runs through the village, and the long line of people standing at the door or sitting on the front porch rockers, waiting to get inside to enjoy Effie Boyd’s food. Some Sundays there would still be a long line at 3 o’clock. It’s kind of funny, though. We didn’t actually walk across the street and eat very often. It was a different day, back then. We seldom ate out at all.

That doesn’t mean we didn’t get to enjoy Mrs. Boyd’s culinary mastery, however. She cooked the food at Porterdale School for many years and nobody ever ate better for 50 cents a week. Any time there was a banquet or fancy dinner in town, Mrs. Boyd did the catering, and on days Mama worked late at the mill, which were many, she would tell me to “run across and ask Ef to send us some supper.” My mama was a great cook in her own right, but I did enjoy those days I got to run across and ask Ef to send us some supper.

Linda told me a story that really made me laugh — and think a little, too. She said that one week before she was to marry Spencer, he was with her at her parent’s house when the new edition of “Brown’s Guide to Georgia” arrived in the mail. In that particular edition, Mrs. Effie Boyd had been recognized as the “Best Cook in Georgia.” Of course we all knew that already.

Linda started crying when she saw the story because, at the time, she didn’t know how to cook at all. Spencer knew what to say and insisted that he wasn’t marrying her for her cooking and would be happy to eat peanut butter sandwiches every day.

Their marriage succeeded and I can testify from eating Linda’s tailgate offerings over the years that she has become an excellent cook in her own right. But I would purely love to be able to run over to the Porterdale Hotel to let Mrs. Effie Boyd fix me a plate just one more time.

Neil Armstrong. Dead at 82.

I don’t know why his passing should come as such a shock, but it did.

We don’t have many heroes in this country anymore — other than the men and women who put their lives on the line on a daily basis for our protection and our freedom, of course. But I’m talking larger-than-life heroes; going where no man has ever dared to go heroes. I am talking about people like –well, people like Neil Armstrong.

Can you imagine what must have been going through his mind when he sat back atop that Saturn rocket, he and the other astronauts of Apollo 11, waiting to be propelled out of the earth’s atmosphere, through outer space and to the lunar surface? Can you imagine what his thoughts were as he prepared to climb down from that lunar landing module?

Can you imagine how much faith he had to place in the thousands of people of NASA that were involved in the mission in some way?

If you are within 10 years of me, age-wise, I am certain you remember exactly where you were, what you were doing and who you were with on July 20, 1969, when Armstrong and his crew made their giant leap into the history books.

I spent the afternoon at a theater in Buckhead, with my high school girlfriend, Kim Puckett. We saw “Goodbye Columbus,” with Ali McGraw and Richard Benjamin. Even the fact that I knew Ali McGraw took her clothes off in the movie and dove into a swimming pool couldn’t hold me in my seat. I kept sneaking back to the concession stand where the popcorn girl had a small television set tuned to the action on the moon. Except there wasn’t much action. All we could see for what seemed like hours was the LLM sitting on the surface of the moon. And it really did look for all the world like a fake contraption set up in the Arizona desert somewhere.

I could have watched the movie because when I got home Sunday night, the module was still just sitting there. It took so long for Armstrong to make an appearance that “Bonanza” was preempted for the moon walk.

But when the hatch finally opened and Neil Armstrong climbed down that ladder and stepped onto the surface of the moon, I was watching with pride. The American flag he planted that day is still there and no other country’s colors have flown on the surface of any celestial body.

And, as we get older, our genetic inheritance becomes far less important and our lifestyle factors become far more desirable. cheap cialis Online pharmacies involved in providing such quality rich drugs are the best sources offering cost effective solutions. tadalafil canada mastercard If you have this dreaded problem, you need to check it purchase generic cialis out. purchase viagra from canada Generic drugs are bioequivalent in pharmacodynamic and pharmacokinetic properties to the brand name drugs. “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” Wow!

I wish I could have had the opportunity to interview Neil Armstrong. I would have liked to ask him about his thoughts, his fears, his dreams. I’d have asked him if it was worth it. I would have asked him what he thinks about the direction our space program is now headed — or our entire country, for that matter.

Most of all I would like to ask him if the story about Mr. Lipinski was true.

According to legend, while Michael Collins was “waiting in the truck” so to speak and Armstrong and his partner, Buzz Aldrin were knocking golf balls around near their landing site, Neil Armstrong gazed toward earth and said “Congratulations, Mr. Lipinski.”

When Mission Control in Houston asked him about the comment he just sloughed it off. Years later, however, after both Mr. and Mrs. Lipinski were dead, Armstrong — again, according to legend — explained that the Lipinskis were his next door neighbors when he was growing up. He supposedly said that when he was a small boy he was retrieving an errant ball from the Lipinskis’ yard and overheard Mrs. L saying that she would do a “certain favor” for her husband when the boy next door walked on the moon.

I am pretty certain that nothing about that story is true, but I wish it were.

Neil Armstrong — an American hero. His passing should remind us of a time when the United States of America could accomplish anything we set our collective minds to. I hope and pray that those days aren’t gone forever. The world needs for those days not to be gone forever.

Godspeed, Commander.

Friday night we have a blue moon — our second full moon of this month. When you glance up at it, as I am sure you will, remember that the first person to walk on it was an American. May that great American rest in peace.

For the past 25 years or so I have lived on a small farm in South Rockdale County. It is South Rockdale County, y’all. I don’t live in the boondocks. I can drive 2 miles in any direction and get a Confederate flag tattoo or a hair weave or buy a lottery ticket. So why in the world do I feel like I am living at Lion Country Safari? We have wildlife coming out of the ying-yang and the species are getting more and more exotic.

One morning a goose flew down my chimney. I was reading the newspaper and having a cup of coffee and all of a sudden it sounded like my chimney was being torn apart brick by brick. Suddenly a very dazed and confused goose, of the Canadian variety, emerged from the fireplace and flew all over the living room — leaving soot and ashes everywhere it landed.

I did what any self-respecting Southern male would do. I opened the door and screamed for my lovely wife, Lisa, to come chase it out with a broom. Another time I was sitting at the kitchen table, again, reading the paper and enjoying a cup of coffee, when the ugliest dog I had ever seen wandered into my yard. Upon closer examination I realized that I wasn’t looking at a dog at all, but a coyote. That was five or six years ago. Since then coyotes have become commonplace on our property. I often hear them howling in the distance at night and one disturbing evening a pack of them showed up in our front yard. Two of the critters started throwing themselves against our front door.

Maybe they heard we kept ducks in the house — or perhaps a roadrunner.

Naturally we have more than our share of rabbits, squirrels and chipmunks. You might think Chip and Dale are cute the way Disney draws them but try keeping them from burrowing in your front lawn and see how you like them.

We have raccoons, too, from time to time. Unless you are in the Davy Crockett hat production business you don’t want a passel of raccoons hanging out in your yard. They get in the trash and eat the cat’s food and make a general nuisance of themselves. They are kind of cute to look at, with their ringed tails and little Halloween masks and all. In fact, they are so cute that our dog treed one once, right off the back deck and I called my brother-in-law over to shoot it. You have to understand, my brother-in-law has hunted all his life and can shoot a deer at 300 yards and field dress that sucker before it gets cold, but even he couldn’t bring himself to look that coon in the eye and pull the trigger.

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We’ve had hawks, owls, foxes, skunks — and don’t get me started on snakes. They are everywhere, and some of them look like harmless rat snakes, but I know they are all deadly cotton-mouthed-water-rattlers in disguise. In general, our little slice of rural America looks like the place Noah emptied the remains of his ark once all the big animals had disembarked.

But this week we got a brand new one. My mother-in-law, who lives next door to us, shot an armadillo — not in her pajamas, but on her patio. An armadillo. In Texas they call them possum-on-the-half-shell and I have seen a few of them on the roadside with their feet in the air lately, but never thought for a minute that they had encroached on our little plot of paradise.

My mother-in-law is a better shot than Annie Oakley and has sent more than her share of squirrels into the great beyond. She makes great squirrel dumplings, by the way. But I am fairly certain she had never even seen an armadillo, much less contemplated shooting one. I asked her why she didn’t just chase it off the patio with a broom instead of shooting it. She said the thought never crossed her mind. “Besides,” she added, “if I had run him off he would have just come back, and I was scared of him.”

Not as scared, apparently, as the armadillo should have been of her. I asked her if she got him with the first shot. She said she shot him with her shotgun first. When that didn’t faze him she got out her .22 and sent the unfortunate creature to meet his maker.

In case you are wondering, she said armadillo tastes just like chicken. And for you folks who are against shooting armadillos — don’t tell me, tell Bitzi. Or maybe you should tell the critters to stay off her patio.

Three weeks ago I wrote these words in this very space.

“Teenagers are killing teenagers. People are being slain during funerals. Thugs are killing innocent people for no reason. Day in and day out there is a steady stream of news about people shooting and killing other people and murder has become so commonplace that we are becoming desensitized to hearing about it.

“Husbands and sons and brothers and uncles leave home in the morning and don’t live to return at night. It is tragic and disgusting and has gone on far too long — especially in the urban areas of our country. But the violence is not limited to the city streets — not by a long shot.

“Some people would have you believe that it is a gun problem. They would tell you that if only the government would outlaw guns then all of the killing would stop. I don’t believe that for a minute, but this is not an attempt to open a dialogue about the Constitutional right to keep and bear arms. What we have here is not a gun problem. What we have here is a societal problem. At some point in time a segment of the human population has come to totally disregard the value of a human life.”

The piece got the usual amount of reaction. Most folks were appalled. I got a few calls to overturn the Second Amendment and leave the guns and the ammunition in complete control of the government — and the criminals. Others insisted the whole problem started with taking prayer out of the schools. Whenever I hear that argument my rebuttal is that it is far worse when God is taken out of the homes than the schools.

I received one rather strange response from a person who, naturally, declined to include his name. Oh, the brave people who hide behind anonymity. This person said that I was basically an idiot for buying into the overstated claims of the mainstream media. He expressed disgust at the idea that I might actually get paid for writing my drivel and insisted that society was no different than it had ever been.

I would like to give you a couple of direct quotes from his letter but I immediately sent it to the trash, along with all the pleas from people overseas who are holding fortunes in my name and the folks who want to enhance my sexual prowess — and those who want to tell me what to write about in my column.

I wonder what my friend thought when he woke up Friday in his rose-colored world of denial and read that a seemingly normal graduate student — a young man with a brilliant mind, from all accounts — decided it would be a good thing to dye his hair orange, like a comic book character, dress himself in black body armor, like a master-criminal in a Hollywood action movie — and pounce into a movie theater, armed with as much fire power as he could carry and start ending human lives.

In an upscale area of Colorado, a person played out a fantasy that had been developing for months in his demented mind and shot 70 innocent theater-goers, mortally injuring 12 and leaving others with emotional and physical scars that will haunt them the rest of their lives.
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One person was able to play God. He was able to choose the time life would end for a dozen people. He left parents without their children and children without their parents. He caused grief and torment for friends and relatives and husbands and wives and brothers and sisters, and authorities say it will be months before analysts will be able to derive a motive.

Does evil have to have a motive? Is not the absence of motive for horrific acts the very definition of madness?

It has happened before. A guy climbs a tower at the University of Texas and starts shooting at students. Two teenagers walk into a school, not far from the theater where our latest horror story played out — and start massacring their classmates. It happened in a school in our very community; luckily, everyone escaped alive.

But there have been many other incidents in which the intended victims weren’t so lucky. Virginia Tech. Ft. Hood. and now, Aurora, Colo.

I heard one talking head on CNN Friday morning insist that the NRA was 100 percent responsible for the 12 deaths that occurred a little after midnight Thursday. Really? The NRA? 100 percent responsible? You might as well blame Benjamin Franklin and John Adams and James Madison.

Our problems as a society go far beyond the scope of the NRA. We are a nation where marriage is too often an afterthought and true commitment not even that. The majority of families in this nation — the vast majority of families in this nation — have abandoned church and all religious instruction. The only true trust too many of us place in God is the stamp we imprint on our money.

We don’t just have a gun problem. We have a society in decay. The treasury is not only nearing bankruptcy, so is our morality and the value of human life in that society is dropping faster than home values and the Dow Jones average put together.

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Verily!

That’s a good old fashioned King James version “red word,” often spoken by Jesus himself when he really wanted his disciples and others to pay close attention to what he was about to say.

You don’t see “verily” in the modern translations of the Bible. It has been replaced by terms and phrases such as “I tell you the truth.” It means the same thing but doesn’t have quite the snap.

When my daddy had something to say that he really wanted me to bear down on he would say, “listen here, now” — except his “here” came out more like “heah” when his Southern accent was factored in.

So — whoever has ears, let him hear. Verily! I tell you the truth! Listen here now! Today I am setting aside the foolishness, the tongue in cheek parody and the stories of old time there are not forgotten, because those of us who live in the rural areas of our communities and receive our electricity from Snapping Shoals EMC — well, we have some business to take care of this week and we cannot sit around and twiddle our thumbs and assume that somebody else will take care of that business for us. Each of us needs to step up and make a statement. Now is the time for all good men — and women — to come to the aid of their co-op.

The Snapping Shoals Annual Meeting is Thursday, July 26, at the Georgia International Horse Park. Maybe you haven’t been to one of the annual meetings. My family and I used to go all the time before they outgrew the grounds of Salem Campground. They are a fun way to spend a morning and part of an afternoon. You will see lots and lots of old friends that you haven’t seen in a while. That’s a given. There are lots of free give-a-ways — like light bulbs and buckets and Cokes and snow cones. You might even come away with a rain gauge if you’re lucky.

They have door prizes, too. There are lots and lots of door prizes. Radios, electric can-openers, crock pots, electric griddles — if it has a wire attached and runs off electricity, there is a good chance they will give it away at the Snapping Shoals Annual Meeting. You might even come home with a truck!

While all of the above are good reasons for taking time to drive out to the Horse Park Thursday, they aren’t the reasons I started this column with verily — or told you to listen here. Between 8:15 and 11:15 Thursday morning they will be conducting a vote. We will be deciding who will represent us on the Snapping Shoals Board for the coming year. This is a big deal. If I were as crass as our vice-president I would add an adjective before “deal” because it is just that big.

Gene Morris (Henry County), Anthony Norris (Rockdale) and Walter Johnson (DeKalb) have been representing us quite ably for many, many years. Few public services, if any, have kept rates as low as Snapping Shoals over the past 20 years. They have always, always, always been accessible to the people and honest and above board concerning the dealing of the company they serve. And make no mistake — these good men serve the company and her customers. None of us serve them.
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Electric service, for those of us lucky enough to get ours from Snapping Shoals, has always been efficient and affordable. We have some of the best rates in the state and every time I flip a switch my lights come on. If I ever do have an outage, due to wind or storms or lightning, we are back on-line in no time. I have never dealt with a better company.

But this year our three directors are being challenged. National environmental activists are supporting a slate of candidates who are determined to shut down the use of clean coal and nuclear power to produce our electricity. If they are able to gain control of our co-op we are guaranteed to pay much higher prices in the future with no guarantees that any of their proposed sources will have any positive impact on the environment whatsoever.

I received a call from a lady in Utah who wanted to explain to me why I needed to vote for her candidate instead of Anthony Norton. Utah! If my power goes out I know right where Anthony Norton works and where he lives. I can walk to his house in 10 minutes. He has lived around the corner from me for 30 years and has lived in this county for twice that. Any decision he makes about our electric company will affect him and all of his family and all of his friends.

If my power goes out or my rates go up that lady in Utah won’t give a rat’s patoot about my problem.

Verily! Y’all find the Snapping Shoals ballots that came in the mail last week. Fill them out and take them to the horse park Thursday to cast your vote. If you cannot get there sign your proxy and give it to someone who can. If you need to know who can take it in for you send me an email and I’ll help you out.

This is important, y’all. If we don’t do this thing our electric rates might triple and we’re likely to be up to our earlobes in spotted owls.

Selah.

Remember blue laws? They are laws that often, when compared to the nuances of modern day society, make people shake their heads and wonder what group of lawmakers ever thought that we needed such regulations. Many of the blue laws clearly intertwined the church and the state, such as laws forbidding businesses to open on Sunday.

Y’all remember Sunday, don’t you? It used to be the day a majority of Americans rested and worshiped. Now it is hard to distinguish Sunday from any other day of the week unless you are hankering for a Chick-fil-A sandwich and an order of waffle fries. I’m not sure but I think it was youth soccer programs that began to make inroads against Sunday. Or maybe it was Walmart. I’m not sure. All I know is that anything goes and, from a purely legal sense, I suppose anything should.

But there are a lot of other old blue laws still on the books in various parts of this state and beyond. Did you know, for instance, that in Georgia members of the General Assembly cannot be ticketed for speeding when the legislature is in session? In Columbus, it is against the law to cuss over the phone or wear a hat in a movie theater and in Atlanta you can’t tie a giraffe to a street light.

I ain’t making this up y’all. I read it on the Internet, so I know it’s true. In Columbus it is also against the law to have a picnic in a cemetery, but to even things out it is also illegal to bury a person under a sidewalk. In Gainesville, the Poultry Capital of the World, there is a city ordinance against eating fried chicken with a knife and fork, as well there should be — but would you think we’d have to pass a law against it?

I’ll tell you something else you wouldn’t think we’d need to pass a law against, but apparently we do. You wouldn’t think we’d need to pass laws in this country prohibiting welfare money to be spent on tattoos and strippers and cigarettes and such. According to published reports — which are almost as dependable a source as “they say” — more and more of the taxpayers’ money is being spent on the types of items listed above — and much worse.

By the grace of God I have never been put in a situation in which I had to rely on the public dole for a living. I’m not saying it couldn’t happen, however. If me or mine found ourselves in a situation in which one of us needed a bit of public assistance to get over a rough patch, financially, I would be mighty glad that public assistance existed and would not be too proud, I don’t believe, to accept food stamps or use an EBT card or whatever it is that folks do who need a little help. But I would hope that I would use the benefits I received to feed myself and my family.

As a taxpayer, I have always assumed the government had safeguards in place to make sure that welfare recipients used their benefits for the necessities of life. Everyone knows what happens when you assume something and, once again, the old adage apparently holds true. Many states, so it seems, are having to take steps to keep welfare money from being spent on prostitutes, casino gambling and alcohol — and a lot of it is apparently wasted, also.
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How does this happen, you ask? Surely you can’t step up to the stage and hand a stripper an EBT card or walk into a liquor store and buy a fifth of Jack Daniels or a bottle of Red Hurricane wine and pay for it with the modern day equivalent of food stamps?

No, you can’t — at least not in most states. But many states do allow welfare recipients to receive cash from ATM machines and once a person gets cash in his or her hand they can pretty much buy anything they want from anybody willing to sell it.

Many states are now making it against the law for welfare recipients to spend cash on the aforementioned goods and services. Yeah, right. Try enforcing those laws. Others are requiring owners of ATMs located in strip joints and tattoo parlors and liquor stores to fix the machines so that they won’t accept EBT cards. That makes as much sense as telling someone they can’t tie their giraffe to a street light.

As you might expect, a lot of folks are up in arms that the government would attempt to tell people how to spend “their” money. Actually, they aren’t. They are trying to tell them how they can spend my money and yours. A simple solution would be to simply discontinue the practice of withdrawing cash with EBT cards.

Way too simple. It’ll never fly.

Meanwhile, don’t keep your donkey in the bathtub. That’s against the law in Georgia.