Author: Darrell Huckaby

I have seen some memorable television ads in my time. I remember Speedy Alka-Seltzer and the old lady that liked hamburgers but was constantly asking, “Where’s the beef?” I remember Santa riding over the snow on a Norelco shaver and Joe Willie Namath shaving his legs with Noxzema shaving cream. And yes, I was as touched as you all were when Mean Joe Greene gave his jersey to that little kid.

You get the picture. Madison Avenue earns billions each year by creating ads that they hope will be memorable and will influence us to buy their products or — in election years, such as this one — vote for a particular candidate or proposition. Some of the information on some of the political ads might even be true, but if so, it is probably by mere happenstance.

Honesty compels me to admit that I don’t remember many political ads and I don’t pay attention to a lot of them because they are so full of lies and half-truths that they are meaningless to a person who has half a brain and can actually think for himself.

I do remember one particular political ad, however. It only ran once, but boy was it effective. The year was 1964 and Lyndon Johnson was running against Republican challenger Barry Goldwater, the Arizona senator who was slightly to the right of John Birch.

We were in the middle of the Cold War and things were heating up in Vietnam. Goldwater’s answer to all foreign policy questions seemed to be “Nuke ’em ’til they glow,” at least according to his critics. That is a dangerous policy nowadays and it was a dangerous policy then — thus the aforementioned ad.

It featured a precious little blonde-haired girl, sitting in a field of daisies. She was pulling petals off a daisy and chanting to herself, “He loves me, he loves me not. He loves me, he loves me not.” We’ve all done some variation of that. Suddenly the whole screen went white for several seconds before the cameras panned backwards, revealing a large mushroom cloud, of the nuclear warhead variety.

The message was clear. Could we trust the hawkish Barry Goldwater with our nation’s future? The folks who put that campaign together knew a little bit about their target audience, I would say.

Advisers, therapists and tyke clinicians can give cheap viagra from uk mediation and important treatment. In fact, levitra prices statistics reveal that electrical malfunctions are one of the leading causes of fires in commercial buildings. It can get a man engrossed well in sexual intercourse, and having intercourse in a viagra samples in canada position which delays your ejaculation.Some other techniques- though they do not serve as a long-term solution- include the “Squeeze” and “Start-Stop” techniques. You need to take the dose cheapest cialis canada at least half an hour before intending to indulge in sexual activity. Now I told you that to tell you this. I saw a political advertisement on television earlier this week. The only reason I watched it was because I couldn’t find the remote control in time to change the channel. I am glad I did, however, and I have, in fact, watched that same ad a few times now. After multiple viewings I have come to the conclusion that the folks who made that particular advertisement are pretty out of touch with a large number of the people who are watching it on television.

The ad concerns the upcoming T-SPLOST referendum. Most people have very little understanding concerning the T-SPLOST. All most people know is that if it passes we will pay an extra penny sales tax for the next 10 years and that our county will put more into the kitty than we take out for local road improvements.

Now that doesn’t mean that we won’t derive benefits because as supporters of the tax point out, most of us will travel into the areas of metro Atlanta that get the lion’s share of the money and we can use the transportation that our funds provide when we do.

But back to this ad. It features a great big wad of tangled highways and rail lines and road signs and says something along the lines of “It’s time to untangle DeKalb and Rockdale.” Then it shows bumper to bumper traffic barely eking along — presumably on roads leading from one of those counties into the other.

Here’s the kicker. Then the ad shows a list of the “advantages” of voting for the bill. The first reason is to provide better access on MARTA rail and buses. Yeah, that’s what I want to see. More MARTA access.

Also, there will be improvements to Panola Road, another huge selling point with me since I spend so much time on Panola Road. Plus, and this is the best yet — improved access to Stonecrest Mall. Glory! I wonder if I can vote more than once. We get to spend a lot more money, for 10 years, and create better MARTA access and make it easier for DeKalb County folks to make their way out to Stonecrest. Win, win, win!

It isn’t exactly a nuclear bomb landing on a little girl in a field of daisies, but I think the ad will be very, very effective — especially for convincing me and my friends to turn out in droves — to vote against T-SPLOST.

Jerry Varnado is a great American. He was born in Jacksonville but moved to Valdosta before being irrevocably damaged by living in the midst of so many Florida Gators. Jerry played football at the University of Georgia — hallowed be thy name — and was a member of a Bulldog team that was SEC Champions and won a Cotton Bowl victory over Donnie Anderson and the Texas Tech Red Raiders, officially making him one of my childhood heroes.

Jerry graduated from UGA and UGA law school, and then became a practicing attorney. Later, after a life-altering experience, he felt the call of God and decided to answer that call and become a minister. Jerry Varnado — football star, scholar and lawyer — finally made a preacher. He graduated from the Candler School of Theology in 1985 and has been serving the Lord ever since.

I met Jerry and his beautiful wife Beverly three years ago, during a session of freshman orientation at UGA. Our paths have crossed on a few occasions since and I have enjoyed getting to know Jerry and Beverly and have come to realize that we all have a lot in common. Beverly, in fact, is a writer, too.

Now I told you that to tell you this. Jerry Varnado has bestowed upon me a high honor. He has invited me to deliver this Sunday morning’s message at his church, Rays United Methodist, in Bishop. It is always an honor to be asked to speak to any group of people — but to be offered the pulpit on a Sunday morning is high cotton, indeed. And to top it all off, this Sunday is homecoming at Rays and that means that after the service they will be having dinner on the grounds.

Now that really struck a chord with me.

I was raised in the Methodist church in Porterdale. We always had homecoming in the fall — on the first Sunday in October. I am pretty sure they still do. We, too, had a guest speaker on homecoming Sunday — sometimes a former minister and sometimes a member of the laity, but the highlight of the day–as I am certain will be the case at Rays UMC — was the dinner on the grounds that followed the preaching.

You talk about some precious memories!
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The words “dinner on the grounds” create an image of a slower lifestyle and a simpler time. There was no Wendy’s or McDonald’s or Captain D’s back then and as far as I knew the closest Chinese restaurant was in Peking. We ate at home, seven days a week, and there was no running out to eat after church on Sunday. We ate well every day but on those special days when dinner was served at the church — those days when all the women of the community cooked their very best dishes and spread them out on long tables covered with red and white checked tablecloths — well, those days were just a little slice of heaven right here on earth.

The women would leave church early to get the tables ready and the smells that came through the open windows of our little brick church would tempt a bishop to pronounce the benediction early. Our visiting preachers might have been tempted to cut the message short but they never did. Homecoming attracted unusually large crowds and every preacher we ever had seemed to have more to say the more people there were in the house to hear him say it.

The wait was almost intolerable, but the meal was always worth the wait. So much good food! We had casseroles made from scratch, fried chicken and roast beef and ham, pickles and relishes of every description and every fresh vegetable known to man. There were always large tubs of sweet tea and fresh-squeezed lemonade to wash everything down with and a big kettle of Brunswick stew, cooked all night over an open fire by Homer Hill and the other men of the church. I am pretty sure I am bordering on gluttony just to think about the desserts. There were cakes and pies and cookies and brownies and churn after churn of homemade ice cream.

Glory! What memories are conjured up by the term “dinner on the grounds.”

Of course I am older and wiser now and I have learned that the message is more important than the meal on homecoming and on every other Sunday, which makes the honor of being invited to speak at homecoming even more significant. There would have been a lot less pressure if I had been merely asked to bring a pork roast or a plate of deviled eggs.

I pray that I am up to the task. As I said, Jerry Varnado is a great guy and I wouldn’t want to let him down. Him nor his boss, either, come to think of it.

Common sense, a rare commodity

May common sense rest in peace.

We have seen it coming for a long time now. We have become a society bound more and more and more by inflexible rules and regulations. I’s are dotted and T’s are crossed and we are constantly referred to the fine print, no matter the situation or the circumstances. Long gone are the days when the end justifies the means.

Many years ago, as I was about to enter the workforce for the first time, I went by to visit Porterdale icon B.C. Crowell to seek advice about how to handle the interview process that I was about to endure. He gave me two pieces of advice that I have never forgotten. The first was to always exude confidence. He said that if I didn’t promote myself as the best possible candidate for whatever job I was seeking, potential employers would assume that I was not. The second was to use common sense when answering all questions.

His comment was, “They won’t care how much book knowledge you have if you can’t handle yourself if they send you downtown.”

Both were sound pieces of advice; however, the latter may, sadly, have become a victim of the litigious times we live in.

Point in case: This past week, in Hallandale Beach, Fla. (It’s close to Miami. I had to look it up, too.), 21-year-old lifeguard Tomas Lopez was fired for leaving his post and running a quarter-of-a-mile down the beach to a “swim-at-your-own-risk” area to save a person from drowning.

I ain’t making this up, y’all. Forget common sense. Forget the parable of the 99 sheep left unguarded. Forget the value of a human life. The Jeff Ellis Management Company — the firm contracted by the city of Hallandale Beach — stated that lifeguard Lopez knowingly violated company policy in leaving his post.

Tomas Lopez broke a rule to save a life. What a dummy!

The Jeff Ellis spokesman said that by leaving his chair unattended Lopez placed swimmers in his area in danger and (here’s the real problem) could have gotten the firm in legal trouble.
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Holy cow!

I know a little bit about the lifeguard business. I was pulled out of Porterdale pool by one when I was five. It was either Sonny or Salty Prince, but I can’t remember which. I’m glad the aforementioned B.C. Crowell didn’t fire him because he left Kay Shaw unattended to lift me out of the drink.

I was aquatics director at Camp Jamison, at Bert Adams Scout Reservation, for seven summers. Don’t tell my lovely wife, Lisa, that I said so, but it was the happiest time of my life. I was King of the Jamison waterfront and a legend in my own mind. I was strict and by the book but may I wake up a Georgia Tech fan tomorrow if I was as ever as out of touch with common sense as the folks who are charged with keeping Hallandale Beach safe — and lawsuit free — this summer.

For several summers, after my camp staff days were done, I managed different pools in the area. Just like my Jamison days, I was strict and by the book but may I wake up an Obama supporter tomorrow if I was as ever as out of touch with common sense as the folks who are charged with keeping Hallandale Beach safe — and lawsuit-free — this summer.

Back to Tomas Lopez. The owner of the Jeff Ellis Management, Jeff Ellis himself, said that Lopez’s stretch of beach was never left unsupervised while he was busy saving a human life but he still insists that Lopez did the wrong thing.

To make matters worse, two other lifeguards were fired the day after the incident because they said, during an interview, that they would have done the same thing. Heavens to Betsy! Has the whole world gone crazy, or just the part of it managed by the Jeff Ellis firm and the Department of Education?

In an effort by the management company to save face and quell the growing public outcry against them, the company did offer Tomas Lopez — and his two fellow employees — their jobs back. To their credit, they all said no. Several other lifeguards have quit in protest and a number of Hallandale Beach regulars have threatened a boycott of the popular vacation spot in protest.

This whole furor will die down in a few days. Lopez and his fellow guards will enjoy their 15 minutes of fame and move on. Jeff Ellis may or may not be retained next season to guard the incorporated waters of Hallandale Beach. The swimmer who was saved from drowning will, hopefully, live a long and prosperous life.

But the real victim here is common sense and the way things are looking in our country these days — well, I am afraid no amount of CPR will save common sense.

Everybody has said just about everything there is to say about the passing of Andy Griffith and the huge impact he has made on American culture. That doesn’t mean I am not going to say my piece, too. I loved Andy Griffith and everything he ever did, including his Gospel album, “Precious Memories.”

Everybody remembers the exploits of Sheriff Andy Taylor and Deputy Barney Fife. Opie Taylor was the kid everybody wished was theirs and Aunt Bee (whom I once dated — ask James Milligan about it) was everybody’s sweet aunt. To say the show was iconic would be to understate its relevance. And who doesn’t know someone exactly like Floyd the barber? Earnest T. Bass, on the other hand, might just be one of a kind.

The residents of Mayberry are as familiar to me as the people I grew up with in Porterdale and when I sit down to watch re-runs of the show, all I have to see is a couple of seconds before saying to myself, “This is the one where Aunt Bee made the kerosene pickles.” Or, “This is the one where Andy was sweet on the new female druggist in town.” I even know that Barbara Eden did nails in Floyd’s barber shop long before J.R. Ewing released her from that lamp on Cocoa Beach.

As good as that show’s ensemble was, the Southern gentleman from Mt. Airy, N.C., was the star and the glue that held everything together. They didn’t put his name in the title without good reason. But Andy Griffith made me laugh long before his first appearance in the Mayberry jail.

Way back in 1958 he appeared in a movie called “No Time for Sergeants,” and I never missed it when it came on television. In fact, I still don’t, and it remains one of the funniest movies I have ever seen. Andy Griffith never did need filth and nudity to make a good movie or foul language to make people laugh. If you aren’t familiar with the latrine inspection scene in “No Time for Sergeants,” you need to rectify that at your first possible opportunity.

It took me a long time to realize that the person who played Army draftee Will Stockdale in that movie was the same person who did “What It Was Was Football,” on the old comedy record my daddy brought home one day. We played it until the grooves wore out.

But back to Mayberry. Before there was “The Andy Griffith Show,” there was “Make Room for Daddy,” with Danny Thomas. I watched every week. I think I had a crush on Angela Cartwright, who played Thomas’s daughter on the show. The pilot for Griffith’s show was actually an episode of “Make Room for Daddy.” Danny Thomas’ character was speeding through the town of Mayberry and was arrested for failure to stop at the stop sign –by Sheriff Andy Taylor. When Danny Thomas argued that he didn’t stop at the sign because there was no road at the sign, Sheriff Taylor replied, “Well, they’s gonna be a road, when we get the money to build it. So far all we got is enough for the stop sign.”
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When Thomas demanded a trial, Sheriff Taylor turned the Sheriff sign on his desk around so that the Justice of the Peace side was showing and presided over the trial. It was a funny, funny bit, and when it turned into a regular show the next year, I was a fan from day one and have been ever since.

I was also a fan of “Matlock,” the show set in Atlanta in which Griffith played a crazy-like-a-fox Southern lawyer who may or may not have been inspired by legendary Atlanta attorney Bobby Lee Cook.

I was a fan of all of these shows, but primarily I was a fan of Andy Griffith. In one of his juiciest roles, in the made for television miniseries “Murder in Coweta County,” he played a bad guy, John Wallace, who was the nemesis of Sheriff Lamar Potts, played by Johnny Cash. In the last scene of the series Griffith is strapped into the Georgia electric chair and prepares to die. A classic performance.

The first person I thought of when I learned that Griffith had died was Dennis Beatty, of the Jefferson Beatty’s. Dennis and I coached together at Clarkston High School in the 1980s and were both huge fans of all things Mayberry. Dennis was apparently a bigger fan than me because when the cast of “The Andy Griffith Show” came to Atlanta to tape a reunion show for Channel 17, he called in sick to go to the reunion. It was just his luck to be called onto the stage to take part in a panel and the next day his picture was on the front page of the AJC — seated right between Helen Crump and Thelma Lou, if memory serves me.

He said it was worth the grief he had to endure when our principal saw the newspaper.

Andy Griffith is gone. May he rest in peace. Andy Taylor will live forever.

John Marshall started the whole thing — inserting party politics into landmark Supreme Court cases I mean. There have been a plethora of them since Marbury v Madison was handed down some 209 years ago.

That ruling, on the surface, seemed to revolve around whether Secretary of State James Madison would have to deliver the documentation to secure a job for William Marbury as Justice of the Peace in the District of Columbia.

The power in the federal government had shifted, you see, from the Federalist Party to the Jefferson Republicans with the election of 1800. The primary reason for the “revolution” was that John Adams and the Federalists had tried to expand their powers beyond those prescribed by the Constitution. They tried to squelch freedom of speech and freedom of the press in one fell swoop. This didn’t sit well with the voting public and Adams was fired for his arrogance — along with a great majority of Federalist Congressmen. Don’t take my word for it. Look it up. You’ll find plenty of information on the subject under the Alien and Sedition Acts.

The only branch of government that the Federalists would control would be the judiciary, because Federal judges are appointed for life. It’s all part of the system of checks and balances, don’t you know.

Now Chief Justice John Marshall was tempted to force Madison’s hand and make him give Marbury his commission and that is what everyone expected him to do. But not so fast my friend! All that would have done was give the Federalists one more insignificant jurist in the nation’s capitol, which wasn’t much of a town back in 1803. Marshall had bigger fish to fry — with apologies to Paul Johnson.

Marshall ruled, instead, that the Judiciary Act of 1791 — the law which said that the secretary of state was required to administer the appointments in the first place — was unconstitutional because Congress had no authority to assign jobs for the secretary of state. That, according to the Chief Justice — was a clear violation of the separation of powers that our Founding Fathers had written into the Constitution — as a way to protect the citizens, ironically, from the tyranny of the government,

What Marshall did, in fact, was create judicial review. He established a precedent by which the Supreme Court could overturn a law passed by the Congress of the United States and signed by the president. Marshall elevated the Supreme Court to a co-equal status with the legislative and executive branches of the government.

It wouldn’t be the last time the nation was shocked by a ruling by the Supreme Court.

There have been dozens — or even hundreds — of landmark cases that changed the course of history of the United States. Often, when these rulings were handed down, the losing political side was convinced that said decision would result in the ruination of the nation.
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Some of the rulings have passed the test of time and remain the basis for the interpretation of the law to this very day. Others have been overturned as times and opinions change. You will recognize many of them from your study of history and civics.

The Dred Scott Decision helped rush the nation headlong into civil war and Plessy v Ferguson legalized segregation in this country based on the statute of separate but equal facilities. Brown v the Board of Education of Topeka, Kan., overturned Plessy v Ferguson. The court said could and the court also said could not. There were groups who thought the sky was falling with each decision and, yet, the sky is still overhead.

Roe v Wade legalized abortion in all 50 states and is terrible case law, no matter where you come down on the pro-life/pro-choice side of the arguments. Miranda v Arizona protected the civil rights of accused criminals and Roth v US protected pornography, to a degree, as freedom of expression.

We could go on and on and on, of course.

On Thursday, Chief Justice John Roberts shocked the political conservatives who thought he had their collective backs for the second time in a week by voting with the left on two explosive cases. The first was a mere hand grenade, as parts of Arizona’s immigration law were struck down. The other was a nuclear blast by comparison. Obamacare was upheld in a decision so confusing that most major news agencies reported that the law had been struck down before they reported that the law had been upheld.

The president, who had been insisting for two years that the law was legal under the commerce clause of the Constitution, but was not a tax was elated, nonetheless, when Judge Roberts announced that by a 5-4 vote the Court had upheld the law as a tax, even though it was not legal under the commerce clause.

And now we have set the stage for perhaps the biggest election in our nation’s history. Democrats say that the ruling clearly vindicates President Obama and answers all his critics who are against the health care law. Republicans say that all the Supreme Court has done is to awaken a sleeping giant and rally the anti-tax-and-spend troops for the November election.

Time will tell. Meanwhile supporters of John Roberts are left to wonder if he is merely crazy, or crazy like a fox.

I was reading about Elvis last week — I know he’s been dead since 1977, but I can still read about him can’t I?

According to the article I was reading, Elvis was big into numerology. One of his favorite books, supposedly, was “Cheiro’s Book of Numbers,” which was said to explain the occult significance between numbers and human events.

Now I don’t believe in any of that, but there have always been certain numbers that have held great meaning for me. Lots of us have favorite numbers, don’t you know.

Three is a good one. I have three children and that has worked out pretty well so far. Three is the number of the Trinity, too. “The three men I admire the most–the Father, Son and Holy Ghost — they took the first train for the coast . . .”

The great Babe Ruth wore number 3. One of my favorite baseball stories is the one Jim Bouton tells about reporting to spring training for his rookie season with the Yankees. Unhappy with the astronomically high number he was given, he asked for a lower one. Told that his 66, or whatever number he’d been given, was the lowest available, Bouton replied, “I didn’t see anybody wearing number 3 out there.”

Gotta love his brass.

Seven has always been one of my favorite numbers, too. Unlike Seinfeld’s George Costanza, I never wanted to name one of my kids 7, but Mickey Mantle did wear it and Mickey Mantle was my hero.

Of course we can’t talk about uniform numbers without mentioning 34, which is the Holy Grail for those of the red and black persuasion. If I ever have to choose a number between one and a hundred — or infinity — you can bet your bippy I am picking 34. And if I ever have an occasion to play roulette — which I’ve yet to do in my first 60 years on the planet — I will put whatever money I have to lose — which won’t be much — on 34 and let it ride.

They say that confession is good for the soul and my soul can always use a boost so I will make a confession that will make me look really silly in the eyes of many. When I am able, I like to swim for exercise. A couple of summers ago I was swimming a mile every day. Jack Bauerle would have been proud.

It’s all look at these guys discount levitra about fulfilment and by taking natural remedies. Chronic stress, discount levitra for example, is directly associated with the reversal of ED condition. Since prevention is always better cheapest levitra generic than cure, by being aware of such signs. At least one sachet is expected a day or within 24 hour period is all you need to take it 30 minutes earlier so that the contents are levitra prescription cost not damaged during transit or while in shelf. At my home pool a mile is a little more than 34 laps — see how numbers connect? — and let’s face it, after a few laps the numbers start running together. Did I just finish 10 laps or did I just finish 12? To keep up with my laps I would assign the number of one of my favorite athletes to each lap. When I finished lap three I would say to myself, “Babe Ruth.” When I finished lap 19 I would say “Johnny Unitas” and when I finished lap 24 I would say “Willie Mays.” When I got to Herschel I was done. Laugh if you will, but it worked.

Not all significant numbers in my life are jersey numbers, of course. 412 used to be a big one because it was the number of our mailbox at the Porterdale Post Office. For years my address was P.O. Box 412, Porterdale. Ironically, when I moved into the now defunct McWhorter Hall at UGA my room number was 412 and my mailing address became Box 412, McWhorter Hall, Athens.

Elvis might have been on to something, come to think of it.

One hundred twenty-nine has been a special number since that night in 1967 when Wills High School beat the Newton Rams, ending our world record home court basketball winning streak at 129. My mind recognizes that number wherever it appears. There can be clocks everywhere and I will never notice if it is 2:10 or 3:47 or 1:19 — but when that sucker hits 1:29, my eyes will take notice.

7060 is another significant number in my life because that was my parents’ phone number for four decades — with various prefixes and area codes added as the years went by and the phone company grew. 1218 stands out, too, because it is my anniversary. I didn’t know what happiness was until I got married. Then it was too late.

I told you all of that to tell you this. I have a brand new favorite number and I think it will remain my favorite number for a long, long time.

That number is 0, y’all, and not because some ball player wears it on his uniform. Zero is the level of Prostate-specific antigen the doctors at MD Anderson found in my blood last week. That is significant because for the past 15 months — through surgery and radiation and all sorts of horrible medications, my PSA had been rising, exponentially, with each and every blood test.

My doctor said he has no explanation for the sudden extreme drop to “non-detectable.”

But I do y’all. I do. Thanks — and please keep them coming.

I heard Billy Graham tell this story at his last crusade, in New York City, so I know it is OK for a family newspaper.

Back in the days of the Old West, an old prospector, who was kind of long in the tooth, wandered into a mining boom town and decided to go into the local saloon and wet his whistle. As he was tying his old mule to the hitching rack, a drunken cowboy stumbled out of the saloon and accosted him.

“Old man,” said the cowboy, “have you ever danced?”

The prospector allowed that he never had and the young cowboy proceeded to empty both his six guns at the prospector’s feet. Sure enough, he danced around on the dusty street trying to avoid the flying bullets. When the drunk had emptied both his guns the prospector calmly walked over to his pack animal, took a sawed-off shotgun out of his saddle bags and pointed it right at the cowpoke’s head.

“Young man,” said the prospector. “Have you ever kissed a mule’s behind?”

“No,” replied the cowboy, “but I’ve always wanted to!”

Now I told you that to tell you this. Until last Friday night, I had never been to Union Point in Green County. I had driven by the sign on I-20 hundreds of times. I had never given a thought to getting off the expressway.

The exit 7 miles west of the Union Point turn-off is a horse of a different story. Many times I have gotten off at that exit and turned left to visit my good friend Carey Williams — the last great country newspaper man — in the Herald-Journal office or to drop off my books at Genuine Georgia or to eat lunch at Yesterday Cafe. Even more frequently, over the years, I have gotten off that same exit and turned right to visit my fortunate friends who have weekend homes on Lake Oconee.

But until last Friday night I had always sped right past the next exit as I hurried on toward Thomson to visit some of my friends in that town, or Augusta or Columbia or Myrtle Beach. I learned Friday that I had been missing out and, the Lord willing, I will find my way back to Union Point sooner rather than later.
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Last week I had the great honor of being invited to speak at Union Point First Baptist Church by Dee Lindsey, who is as fine a fellow as anyone would ever want to meet. As soon as I drove into town, I felt at home because Union Point used to be a mill town.

There are so many places dotting the Southern Piedmont that “used to be” mill towns, but even though most of the mills are closed and a lot of the towns are in decline, anyone who was raised on a mill village will get a certain feeling when they drive through one of those old towns. All of us lintheads are kindred spirits to a degree. If you have never been one, you wouldn’t understand, but folks who were raised in Porterdale or Milstead or Covington Mills — or Union Point — have a common heritage. It is like we were raised together in different places.

When I went inside the First Baptist Church, I felt eerily at home. At first, I couldn’t put my finger on that feeling, but as I looked around the sanctuary at the exposed beams and ceiling and the arched windows and hanging light fixtures I realized that the church building could have been built from the same set of blueprints as the Julia A. Porter United Methodist Church where I was raised.

But the thing that really made me feel at home at Union Point was the warmth and graciousness of the people who came in on a Friday night to hear me tell my story about how God is taking care of me during my ongoing battle with cancer.

June and Jerry Johnston were even there. June and Jerry were mainstays at Heritage High School for a long, long time before retiring to Lake Oconee. June is one of my heroes. She and I share a love of good books and a set of beliefs about academic rigor and expectations concerning classroom behavior.

I got to share the evening with a splendid gospel quartet that call themselves the New Apostles and their music warmed my heart and helped me prepare to tell my story. The reception I received before, during and after my talk was unbelievably welcoming and as is always the case, I left the place having received many more blessings than I delivered.

Union Point is my kind of place. I can’t wait to return. I wonder how many other Union Points there are out there that I just don’t know about.

Selah.

I have officially joined the cult. I am an egghead. My name is Darrell and I own a Big Green Egg and I cannot stop cooking on it.

Let me explain.

Remember back when there was a Circuit City electronics store in our area? They ran a particular commercial for years. A father and his son would visit Circuit City over and over and over, gazing wistfully at the wide screen high definition television that they hoped to buy and bring to their own home one day. They would return with each passing season and take up residence in front of the TV set until the store closed and they had to go home to their own antique 35-inch set.

That’s me — except with the Big Green Egg. For years I have found every excuse in the world to drop by Cowan Ace Hardware for this and that. As often as I visited Cowan’s one would think that I would have the neatest yard and most squared away home in the area. One would be wrong. My numerous trips to the hardware store were actually thinly veiled excuses to visit the grill section and stare at the Eggs, dreaming of the day that I could own one myself.

For the uninitiated, a Big Green Egg is a unique type of ceramic grill, smoker, roaster, oven and all-round cooking device perfected by Georgian Ed Fisher in the 1970s. The first person I ever knew who owned one was former Ebenezer UMC pastor Davis Hancock. He used to rave about how efficiently they cooked and what delicious and moist food they produced. Back in those days, the product was mostly promoted through small ads in the sports pages of the big city newspaper — often right next to those for Asian massage parlors.

As the years passed more and more folks I knew became Egg converts and for the past five or six years one of the hot topics of conversation at school — especially when Bob Bradley and Casey Teal get together — has been that self-same smoker. Bob and Casey would compare cooking techniques, citing cook times and temperatures as if they were quoting passages from Deuteronomy and the conversation was always laced with talks of rubs and spices and marinades and what sort of wood chips created the best flavor.

Now understand, these weren’t casual conversations or words shared in passing. These were long passionate discussions. It was obvious that these guys were committed to what they were doing.

But talk is cheap. The proof is in the pudding — or, in this case, the ribs, Boston butt and smoked turkey breast. I had the opportunity to sample some of Casey’s cooking at an Athens tailgate party one October. A couple of years later, Bob Bradley held court with a wide array of his food at the Georgia-Colorado game. Last fall, he offered samples of his wares at Cowan’s while I signed copies of my new cook book, and then, last Thanksgiving, when he produced a smoked turkey for me that my own kids said was better than anything I had ever cooked, my mind was made up. I would own a Big Green Egg.
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A month ago I pulled the trigger and I am here to tell you that my life has been changed. I was already interested in becoming an Egghead. Now I am committed to being one. I simply cannot stop cooking on my Egg.

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. For one thing it uses lump charcoal, which starts quickly, without lighter fluid, and burns consistently. I can get my cooker to a set temperature and it will stay there for hours. I’m talking 10 or 12 hours. I ain’t making this up, y’all. The coal burns with very little ash and what doesn’t burn up can be reused.

The domed shape of the cooker and the thick ceramic sides holds in heat and flavor and moisture like nothing I’ve ever experienced — and, no — I am not an official spokesman for the company. So far I have cooked Boston butts twice, ribs three times, whole chickens a half-dozen times, and smoked turkey. I have also cooked some of the best steaks I have ever eaten — 600 degrees, four minutes to the side.

Every bite of food has been delicious and, besides all that, it is just a lot of fun to experiment with rubs and spices and marinades and …. well, all those things I’ve listened to Bob and Casey talk about for years. Plus I got a huge compliment from my kids when they said, “Daddy, your stuff is just as good as Bob’s!” That alone was worth the price.

Is there a downside to the Big Green Egg? Oh, absolutely. I am eating way too much meat and have gained 6 pounds this month. When I get to M.D. Anderson in Houston on Monday my doctors are going to read me the riot act.

But it is Texas. Maybe I can temper their ire a bit if I smuggle in a little sliced brisket. Excuse me while I fire up my Egg. I’ve got some doctors to bribe.

#

I turned up the car radio when the noon news came on Thursday — hoping I could hear an encouraging word about potential rain in the weather forecast. There was nothing encouraging about the noon news Thursday.

In Clayton County, during a routine traffic stop, a passenger in a car pulled a gun and shot the driver of the car in the stomach. The police wound up shooting and killing the man who had done the shooting. There were reportedly five people riding in the car, one of whom had an outstanding arrest warrant. One of the passengers fled, two were taken into custody and the gut-shot driver was taken to the hospital for treatment. This was Clayton County, understand, not the OK Corral.

Next came the news that a man who had been shot near Turner Field on Wednesday died of his wounds early Thursday morning while a second man, shot in the same gunfight, remains in critical condition. I came home and found out that you can watch a video of that shooting right on the Internet. Police released it in hopes that someone could identify the shooter. The time stamp on the video is 1:55 p.m. It’s not exactly high noon, but it is close. The shooter was not wearing a Stetson or cowboy boots. He was actually wearing jeans to his knees, a wife-beater T-shirt and some sort of turban.

Meanwhile, in Union City, the GBI released sketches of two men wanted in connection with two fatal shootings in that town that occurred back in March. In other news, Atlanta police arrested a 24-year-old man Wednesday and charged him with a fatal shooting that occurred Monday around midnight.

These stories were all in one 5-minute newscast, y’all. What is this world coming to?

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. Much of the violence is black-on-black crime, but the reality of the situation is that it doesn’t matter if those involved are white, black, brown or green with yellow polka dots.

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.
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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.

After I finished my errands Thursday, I came home and began to do a little online research. In the city of Atlanta alone there are almost 6,000 violent crimes reported per year — according to a website called Neighborhood Scout — making it safer than 0 percent of the nation’s cities. As already noted, however, violence — particularly gun violence — has spread across the metro area and all of us have the potential to become victims.

OK. So there is no news flash here. I am not telling anybody anything they don’t already know — at least not if said person hasn’t been so wrapped up in which singer would become the next “American Idol” winner or so busy watching Cajuns chase alligators in the Louisiana bayous that they haven’t paid any attention to what is happening in our own backyards.

It is easy to identify the problem. We have become a society in which marriage is an afterthought and more and more young people are being raised in homes in which there are no fathers and no moral instruction. Children are raising children in too many cases and grandparents who couldn’t raise their own children are equally incompetent at raising their grandchildren. A generation of people who failed to embrace educational opportunities for themselves shows no interest in helping the next generation do better.

And people ridiculed Dan Quayle when he told Murphy Brown this would happen.

Yes, it is easy to identify the problems that have led to the widespread disregard of the value of human life by subsets of our culture. Finding solutions — now that is a horse of a different color. Meanwhile the beat — and the shootings — go on.

“Summertime, and the livin’ is easy. Fish are jumpin’ and the cotton is high . . .”

If only I could experience summertime as an 8-year-old boy in the American South again! The livin’ was indeed easy, as far as I knew. Who needed air conditioning and computers and wide-screen television? We had shade trees and rope swings and acres of woods to explore.

Summertime was long walks down dusty dirt roads in search of blackberries and wild hog plums — and on rainy days it might be sliding down red clay banks all day long and washing off in the river before heading home.

Summertime was a daily uniform consisting of precisely two garments — a pair of cut-off jeans and a pair of step-ins. There was no need for a shirt or shoes and every kid in town would be “dark as a wild Indian” by Labor Day — and an occasional stumped toe or foot full of sandspurs was a small price to pay for being able to squish your toes in the mud and traipse through a creek all morning in search of salamanders and crawdads.

Summertime was tomatoes right off the vine sliced directly onto mayonnaise-laden white bread for lunch — liberally seasoned with salt and pepper, of course — and vegetables right out of the garden for supper every night — okra, squash, pole beans, Silver Queen corn, purple hull peas, butterbeans — with Vidalia onions on the side and cucumbers cut up into vinegar. You can have your prime rib and fancy restaurant meals. I’ll take any three of the above any day, especially if there was hot buttered cornbread to sop up the pot liquor — and there always was.

Summertime was sitting on the front porch in the cool of the evening, shelling peas and shucking corn and visiting with the neighbors. It was chasing lightning bugs and lying in the grass looking up at the stars. You could see billions of stars in the Southern night sky in 1960. Now you see about two-dozen on a good night.

Summertime was digging for worms and fishing for catfish, any time you wanted, without having to have someone take you. If the fish weren’t “jumpin'” it didn’t matter. It was fun sitting on the bank of the river holding a cane pole whether your float bobbed or not. If you got tired of fishing you could skim rocks across the water or go below the dam and wade on the shoals — as long as you didn’t do it alone.

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Summertime was the Crackers on the radio at night and getting up early in the morning to scan the box scores in the morning paper to see how many hits Mickey Mantle had gotten the night before — or if Yogi Berra had hit a home run. And it was choosing up sides and playing all morning and all afternoon — or playing flies-and-grounders, push-up or roller-bat if you didn’t have enough guys to make two teams. And it was playing Red Rover and freeze tag and tag-out-of-jail after supper — with an occasional game of hide-and-go-seek thrown in after dark.

Summertime was a long succession of endless days — days of being out the front door at first light and not having to be home until the streetlights came on. It was looking for discarded bottles to trade for a Coke and a nickel’s worth of penny candy. It was digging into the bottom of the drink cooler and searching for that one perfect six-ounce bottle of Coca-Cola that had a slight crust of ice forming at the top. It was Saturday night cookouts and hand-churned ice cream and camping out in the backyard with your buddies, scaring one another to death with tales of Bloody Bones and Soap Sally.

Summertime was scrounging around the village in search of cast- off lumber, nails, wheels, shingles, and whatever else could be found to make a hut or scooter or raft that wouldn’t float. It was three whole months away from school without a care in the world beyond how to fill the next hour’s time — and if you decided to fill that time by doing absolutely nothing — that was perfectly fine, too.

Summertime for an 8-year-old in the American South in 1960 was an endless string of endless idyllic days which did actually come to and end — and far too soon.

“Summertime, and the livin’ is easy.”

It was indeed. Indeed, it was.

Water, water everywhere, but nary a drop to drink. That’s not a problem, though, because there is plenty of other stuff — and don’t even get me started on what there is to eat.

As you read this I am somewhere in the Caribbean — checking out Christopher Columbus’s old stomping grounds. Now that was a brave dude. He set his stern to Europe and his bow toward the setting sun and did what no one had ever done before — at least no one who actually documented his feats. He sailed west across the Atlantic Ocean and didn’t stop until he found land. They didn’t call him Admiral of the Ocean Seas for nothing, you know.

Nowadays Christopher Columbus is vilified because he kidnapped some of the natives he found on the islands he explored and took them back to Spain for show-and-tell. Folks say that Columbus didn’t know where he was going or where he had been and that he didn’t discover America because the Vikings may or may not have been here first. Plus Columbus’s men and those who would follow introduced the Indians to diseases for which they had no immunities and forced Christianity on them and … well, you know all about that. You can blame all the evils of modern society on either Christopher Columbus or George W. Bush.

I still say Columbus was a brave man and he opened the door to a whole new world, and if you are going to blame the death and disease and destruction on Columbus it seems like you’d have to give him a little credit for Coca-Cola and the space program and defeating Hitler and Tojo and winning the Cold War, too.

But I digress — as usual.

What I started to tell you was that my lovely wife, Lisa, and I are on vacation this week. I might not be deserving of a vacation, but I sure have been in need of one. The problem is, when I take a vacation it usually takes me a week or two to recover. I’m not what you would call a stationary person. I will drive a hundred miles out of the way to take a picture of the world’s largest — or even third-largest — ball of string or roll of aluminum foil. I also have a genetic disorder that prevents me from driving past a historical marker. I have never by-passed a scenic overlook without stopping and if somebody — anybody — tells me there is something to do or see within a day’s drive of my destination, I am going to make sure I do it or see it.

Vacations, Huckaby-style, are exhausting, understand. This year I could not afford to be exhausted. I couldn’t afford a vacation, either, but that is another story for another day.

It turns out that some close friends had been planning a Caribbean cruise to celebrate their 30th anniversary. Lisa and I will be celebrating our 30th this year, too — if we don’t kill one another between now and Christmas. Our friends convinced me that a cruise ship would be a perfect venue for a restful vacation. I wouldn’t have to drive. In fact, the captain of the ship wouldn’t allow it, even if I wanted to. They promised me that I wouldn’t have to make any decisions and that someone else would do all the cooking. All I would have to do would be make it onto the boat and sit in the sun.
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So far it has worked out well. That is all I have done — or felt like doing, for that matter.

Now this ain’t my first rodeo — or my first cruise. Sixty-five stalwart souls accompanied me on an inner-passage adventure in Alaska a few years back and my kids let me accompany them on a cruise with the high school band one year. But I don’t have a great amount of experience with cruising.

I do have a great amount of experience with eating, however, and that has stood me in good stead so far this week, because that is what I have done the most of — that and sit on the deck looking at the ocean.

There has been a lot of opportunity for reflection, too, which is something we could all stand a little more of. Which brings me back to Christopher Columbus.

Whether you believe that Columbus was a hero or a villain you have to admit one thing. He changed the world, and you can’t say that about a lot of people.

I won’t change the world this week, that’s for sure. I might not do a single worthwhile thing, in fact. I may spend a totally selfish week of rest and relaxation without reading a single historic marker. On the other hand, I will be visiting Haiti and Jamaica and a couple of other places I have never been and I am sure something has happened at some of those places that is worth knowing about.

Who knows? Maybe I will need to come back from my cruise and rest. Lester Maddox once told me that it is better to wear out than rust out. Ol’ Lester might not have been the Admiral of the Ocean Seas, but I think he was a pretty wise old man.

I would never have believed this if anyone other than Mary Supple had told me, but Mary Supple is from North Dakota and I have never known anyone from North Dakota to tell a lie. Besides, she taught across the hall from me for years and only complained about my loud music a handful of times, and she is the only person I know who has personally talked to Regis Philbin while serving as a lifeline on “Who Wants to be a Millionaire.”

Hers is a trustworthy resume, understand.

Last week a Gwinnett County jury awarded a widow $5 million in a wrongful death malpractice suit. Nothing that unusual there, of course. Juries have long been known to be very generous with insurance companies’ money — especially when a grieving widow is involved, and everyone knows that if a doctor is sued he doesn’t actually pay the money out of his own pocket — his malpractice insurance picks up the tab.

Of course, most people have no idea how much malpractice insurance costs on an annual basis or how it affects their own health costs or the availability of high risk specialists in particular areas, but hey — most people know very little when you get right down to it.

Suffice it to say, a woman winning a malpractice case against a doctor is not particularly rare, but this lady won not because of what the doctor did, but rather because of what the doctor didn’t do — or at least because of the warning he didn’t give. Keep reading. Y’all ain’t gonna believe this.

Three years ago a 31-year-old husband and father of two was examined by a particular doctor in a large Gwinnett County cardiology practice. According to the attorneys for the plaintiff (wasn’t Plaintiff the name of Lewis Grizzard’s first three wives?) the doctor found a few heart-related problems with his patient, such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol and a possibly blocked artery.

According to this same law group, the doctor believed the patient to be stable and instead of treating the case as an urgent and life-threatening measure, he ordered a nuclear stress test, which was scheduled to take place in eight days.

Unfortunately, on the seventh day — one day before the stress test was to take place — the patient — who was a policeman, by the way — thought it would be a good idea to check into a hotel room near Hartsfield International Airport with a woman who was not his wife (no word on what kind of settlement she received) and another male friend. I suppose these people were all French because published reports claim they engaged in something called a menage a trois.

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I would not have wanted to be the one who made that phone call to the dead man’s wife.

It’s a great country, isn’t it? The widow sued the doctor on the grounds that he should have recognized that her husband’s condition was much more serious and warranted immediate care. Besides, the doc didn’t warn the husband to limit his sexual activity until they got to the bottom of his problem. What medical professional doesn’t remind a heart patient that sex with another man and a woman could be fatal?

The jury saw it the way the widow and her attorneys saw it and gave the woman the aforementioned multi-million dollar settlement.

I guess I still haven’t heard everything, but I’m coming close. I think we have taken one more giant step forward into a land where all personal accountability is going to be thrown right out the window. Ironically, I just wrote last Wednesday that I was considering taking up suing people as a second career. My stated intentions were to sue anonymous people who hurt my feelings, but this case opens up a whole new realm of possibilities for me.

I have seen a number of doctors my entire life, for instance, and not a single solitary one of them ever advised me against contracting cancer. There ya go! They were all clearly negligent and their insurance companies all have deep pockets.

I counted up recently and I have seen more than a dozen doctors this year alone. There are a lot of things none of them have advised me against doing. None of them have told me not to play in traffic or jump out of an airplane without a parachute or try to pick up the wife of a professional football player in his presence. There are all kinds of ways I can make money off this precedent.

My daddy always said that he wanted to live to be 101 and get shot by a jealous husband. He lived in the wrong day and age. If I make it 41 more years that may be just what I’ll do — and if she plays her cards right my lovely wife Lisa can become a wealthy widow.