Thought Processed

Fight Like a Girl

2010-08-17T13:21:00.000-04:00

When we were kids my buddy Peanut Groves accused his cousin Pork Chop of fighting like a girl.

Pork Chop was smarting over an unfortunate encounter with the runt that lived down the street. Peanut was helping him evaluate his performance.

Turns out, telling another guy he fights like a girl isn’t appreciated.

Pork Chop was getting up to throw Peanut on the ground, but his sister, Bertha, took exception to the comment as well and beat her brother across the room.

I don’t think Peanut saw her foot move until it swept the back of his knee. As he landed on his backside, Bertha pounced on top of him, flipped him over, dug her knee into his back, and shoved his right arm up in a chicken wing before he could grunt twice.

Once he was helpless, Bertha gave him a little scratch on his neck, grabbed his hair and pulled it hard.

“Kick, scratch, claw, pull hair - you boys think you’re sissies if you fight that way,” Bertha said. “That’s how girl’s fight. If Pork Chop fought like a girl, he wouldn’t be licking his wounds now.”

Peanut yelled a few demeaning insults at Bertha and then said “uncle.”

After turning Peanut loose, Bertha glared over at me. I had always thought she was cute until that moment. For once, I was a smart boy and kept my mouth shut. The Groves family is a highly charged group.

Ever since then, when I hear the term “fight like a girl” I look over my shoulder for Bertha.

That term is posted underneath the email signature of one of my friends. She and her family have helped me a lot over the years. In fact, I never would have been elected to public office without them. I’m highly confident that I could stop her from putting me in a chicken wing, but I’ve never pushed it.

I got a call from her a while back. She wasn’t in much of a mood for our usual lively conversation about politics (she says Sarah Palin is great and I throw up).

“Listen,” she said. “I want you to hear it from me that I’ve got breast cancer.”

I hated hearing that almost as much as she hated saying it. This cancer stuff really ticks me off. It scares me too. I’ve had too many friends and family who’ve had their bodies ripped apart by it or worse.

The day before my friend had surgery to eradicate the cancer, her husband was diagnosed with esophageal cancer. The next day, he was at her side after her surgery both of them joking about losing their hair together.

After her successful surgery, she began chemotherapy. He started radiation and chemo treatment to shrink the tumor before they performed surgery on him.

I stopped in to see him a few weeks later after his successful surgery. He was asleep in the hospital bed. She was curled up under a blanket in the chair next to him. Neither had hair, his head shiny and reflecting the light, hers covered by a bandana. There are a lot of courageous acts in this world. A husband and wife fulfilling their vow of love in sickness and in health is one of them.

I wiped the tears welling up in my eyes before they woke up and saw me. Brave people those two. They’re gonna fight together. They’re gonna win.

When it comes to cancer we all have to kick, claw, scream, hit, and fight without giving up. The disease is a wretched, wicked beast. It effects one out of three people. You can list ten folks effected by cancer in sixty seconds or less. I know you can.

It takes great strength to beat this beast. A lot of these cancer surviving warriors will be on hand at Dellinger Park on September 11. That’s the day (and night) Relay for Life is holding a walkathon to raise money to fund cancer fighting research.

The goal is to raise $300,000. It hasn’t been reached yet so you have an opportunity to do something worthwhile and join the fight. There will be over 100 teams walking and having other fundraising activities going on to reach this goal. The cost for a team is only $100 and the more teams, the merrier the event. Find out more information at www.bartowrelayforlife.org.

Bring your wallet. Things really worth doing have a cost.

The folks you are helping are warriors using whatever means necessary to win their battle.

They fight like a girl.

2010-06-07T10:34:00.002-04:00

It’s almost beach time.

When I was a kid and discovered that the place where land met the sea created the North America’s largest continuous sandbox. I’ve liked spending some time each summer at the surf ever since.

Of course some years later I noticed that cute girls wearing minimal clothing gathered at the edge of the surf in bunches. Such a sight was enough to peak the interest of any red-blooded boy. Being that my blood that ran red and my eyes opened as wide as their beady sockets allowed I found the beach a great place to be when summer rolled around.

That was back in the day when we called baby oil sunscreen. Sun Protection Factors maxed out at eight and Aloe plants were grown on the porch of every beach house because there were no condos and Panama Jack hadn’t started bottling burn soothing green gel. Needless to say my back took in more heat that my eyes and time spent in the Sun was usually limited by my somewhat fair complexion.

I lived an hour and fifteen minutes from two places where the ocean washed onto a shore. St. Simon’s Island and Fernandina were the locales. Many of you mistakenly call the latter Amelia Island because somebody built a plantation there. Rest assurded that it’s a plantation in name only as I have been to the end of the island a couple of dozen times and never have seen any cows or planted corn.

Amelia’s plantation does grow a lot of itsy bitsy yella polka dot bikinis. Beachwear companies have developed a number of other eye-catching designs as well. It’s amazing what the wonders a creative mind can work with a string of cloth.

Unfortunately, gates and guards protect the view of the plantation goods. My buddies and I grew adept and convincing the gatekeepers there that we had befriended half of the residents to the point that they thought we owned a few units ourselves.

In the end working was a major deterrent to combing beaches for bikinis so trips to the ocean dunes were too few but made a lasting impression.

Having children redirected the focus back to the sandbox experience. Little girls love digging in the sand and it turns out their daddies can grow fanatical about it as well. Dig up enough sand and creating arches, coliseums and lagoons complete with sand made monsters only take time and a little imagination.

People watching is, however, still a major past-time. I do limit it to periods while sitting under an umbrella next to my wife. Observations center more on spotting surgical body enhancements and alterations rather that on the latest bikini fashion. I probably shouldn’t admit to oogling female eye candy, but my blood is still red and my eyesight and appreciation for God’s diligent work remains intact.

Like I said though, my wife, who I find quite the eye candy herself, is at my side and I can’t even remember a pick-up line. That makes people watching strictly an observation sport.

Viewings at the beach aren’t always pleasant though and wardrobe fouls seem to be more common than twenty-five years ago. Wardrobe fouls are noted when the flesh to cloth ratio is deemed excessive. Even worse, there is the safety hazard of stretching Spandex beyond its practical application. Recoil when those suckers bust can be fatal.

I have lobbied officials to institute an overlap rule so that the beach patrol can require additional coverage on anyone whose belly laps over the top of their suit to the point that the waistband is no longer visible.

The worst violators are men in bikini suits, particularly those with hairy backs. That’s about as far from eye candy as you can get. Good taste and violation of the overlap rule preclude me from bikini shorts, but I do get a back waxing each year so no one winces when I walk past.

This year I sense that I’ll be leaving the sandbox stage and re-entering the bikini watching phase, only this time I will be watching the watchers instead of the bikinis. Having one teenage daughter and another a few years from that age will do that to you.

I guess that means making a wardrobe modification so I will have somewhere to strap in my gun. I know what those boys are thinking.

Can't get water when the well goes dry

2010-06-03T16:01:00.000-04:00

I made my high school pitching debut in Fitzgerald, Georgia. We were playing the Purple Hurricanes for sole possession of first place in our sub-region.

I wasn’t scheduled to pitch that day. I wasn’t scheduled to pitch ever.

Our starter for that game was supposed to be our ace pitcher and clean-up hitter. We called him Pudus even though we didn’t know what the word meant. He was a lefty and probably the best pitcher and hitter in the region when he didn’t have a separated shoulder. He got one of those two days before the big game. The doctor said he couldn’t play until he got his arm outta the sling.

That left us with out number two guy, Maxie. He was also a lefty and batted third. Maxie was a hoss and arguably the second best pitcher in the region.

The problem was Maxie was the biggest clown in South Georgia. The day before our game with the Purple Hurricanes we headed over to Jesup to play the Yellow Jackets. When we crossed into Wayne County two girls pulled up behind the bus and started making gestures that Maxie said was an assault on his manhood.

He quickly determined that the proper response to these insults was pressing his bare bottom against the back window of the school bus. I have never seen Maxie’s naked butt, but I imagine it was not a pleasant sight. Those girls evidentially took offense and called somebody at our school.

It turns out that pressing your bare bottom against the back window of a school bus gets you kicked off the baseball team and suspended from school. This reality left us without Maxie’s services.

After losing our best players, our coach opted to give our number four pitcher his first start in the season’s most important game. Big Tony was a sophomore and future college football All-Conference tackle at Georgia Southern. He could throw a baseball through a brick building. Hitting the building was his problem.

We were only down 3-2 and Big Tony was holding his own until Fitzgerald scored seven runs in the fifth inning. At the end of the inning Big Tony was out of gas. I could throw sort of hard so the coach asked me if I had ever pitched before.

Ever is a long time and I thought tossing a few innings in Little League qualified as a “yes” which is what I told him. That answer landed me on the pitcher’s mound.

My buddy Peanut was the catcher and he came to the mound before the inning to lay down the law.

“Just throw what I tell you and you’ll be alright,” he said patting my shoulder.

‘That ain’t gonna happen,” I snorted. “Now shut up and go catch what they don’t hit.”

The first batter I faced was a showboat so I hit him with the third pitch. He dodged the first two. The next guy knocked the ball up the middle for a base-hit, but was erased on a double play one batter later.

I hit another fella sort of unintentionally and then walked the next batter to load the bases.

That sent Fitzgerald’s clean-up hitter, Tommy Greenbow, to the plate. Tommy and I had gotten to be friends the summer before at a baseball camp. He could hit a ball a long way. I grinned at him when he stepped into the batter’s box. He growled.

Peanut signaled for a fastball. I shook my head “no.” He put down two fingers for a curveball. I shook my head “no.” We ran thru that sequence again before he flashed three fingers for a knuckleball.

Not to brag, but that knuckleball was the prettiest pitch I’ve ever seen in my life. It floated across the air and then dipped beneath Tommy’s bat as if it saw the swing in progress.

Peanut threw the ball back and gave the same signals as before. I shook my head “no” six times before he laughed and flashed three fingers.

The knuckler rose, dipped and dove into the dirt while Tommy swung hard enough to generate a gale force wind. I laughed and Tommy got madder.

Peanut called time and trotted to the mount.

“I know what you’re thinking and that third time ain’t always the charm Bubba,” he said trying to stop laughing. “You ought to give ‘em a high heater.”

“Go squat yourself behind the plate and catch what I throw,” I told him.
Peanut laughed, pulled on his mask and did as he was instructed. Our coach was hollering that for me not to the same pitch a third straight time. I assumed he was trying to decoy the hitter.

The sign said that the fence in the left field alley at Fitzgerald’s old baseball field was 355 feet from home plate. Twenty-five feet or so behind the fence was a railroad track. It was a good ten to twelve feet higher than the fence. Kudzu covered the vacant wooded lots ten feet from the tracks.

They say nobody had ever hit a baseball into that kudzu. Nobody that is, until Tommy Greenbow launched a knuckleball that didn’t knuckle into the Heavens. Those watching say it landed in the kudzu, but no one ever found the ball. I’m convinced that it burned up upon reentering the earth’s atmosphere.

Peanut strolled to the mound, took off his mask and watched Tommy make his home run trot around second base.

“Well, guess I was wrong,” he said. “Turns out the third time was the charm, just not for you. Want to try that thing you call a fastball up and in this time? Some idiots like swinging at balls in their eyes… or you could keep trying to draw water outta a dry well and throw another knuckler.”

The next batter popped out to third on the first pitch. It was a fastball up and in. We didn’t score twelve runs in the top of the seventh and the game and my pitching career ended poorly.

So there’s another great Peanutism for your daily living – “if you go to the well too often the bucket will eventually come up dry.”

Have a nice Memorial Day.

Here's to you Mrs. Robinson

2010-05-20T08:15:00.000-04:00

I opened a Facebook account about two years ago. I have about a thousand “friends” including a woman many now mistake for a Mrs. Robinson.

For those of you not familiar with Mrs. Robinson, she portrayed the Big Screen’s first Cougar in the movie “The Graduate.” Cougars are women who seduce younger men.

Mrs. Robinson seduced her son’s recently graduated college buddy in 1968. Dustin Hoffman played the recently graduated prey in the movie.
Eventually, Mrs. Robinson’s husband and son found out about the affair, which was as well received as a two-by-four to the nose. While all this was going on Hoffman fell in love with Mrs. Robinson’s daughter, stopped the daughter’s wedding, swept her off her feet and the two rode blissfully away into the sunset.

The Academy gave the movie a few Oscars, Hoffman become an acting icon and Mrs. Robinson was immortalized in Simon and Garfunkel’s song “Here’s to you Mrs. Robinson.”

I’ve always been perplexed as to why no one made a sequel. A Thanksgiving dinner scene with the whole family present would have the most awkward scene in movie history and made “The Post Graduate” a huge hit.

As for Facebook, this animal is a website for social networking. The network is a place where people set up a free restricted account so they can share pictures and other information with their friends who have access to their account. People write their friends messages on internet pages called “walls.” When you post one of these messages everyone in both networks can read it. That can be rather dangerous.

I opened my Facebook page one day and noticed a friend of mine named Jeannie was having a birthday. The people running the website list your friends having a birthday everyday. I saved a YouTube video of the Beatles singing a quick Happy Birthday jingle onto the hard drive of my computer and post it on someone’s wall when it’s time to celebrate another successful trip around the Sun. Since it was Jeannie’s birthday, I posted the link on her wall.

Jeannie is about thirteen years older than me. She is and has always been a good looking lady. Her father was my doctor when I was a kid. She is a good friend of my family who was a frequent guest at our house until she moved away when I was about fourteen. I’ve seen her sporadically over the past thirty years and we’ve traded a few messages since I joined Facebook.

As I was saying, those messages on Facebook can be dangerous. Jeannie replied to my wishing her a happy birthday and we traded a few other postings about memories of days gone by. Then she confused about a thousand friends of mine.

“I remember your waterbed. Do you still have it? J,” she wrote. Social network critics write unfavorably about this type of statement.

Peanut Groves called the morning after I had posted the video on Jeannie’s wall and before I saw her last comment.

“Is there something you want to tell me,” he asked in a rather gruff manner. I told him there wasn’t, but he wasn’t buying.

“So what happened with your waterbed and what memories does Jeannie have of it?”

I opened the internet to see what he was talking about and dropped my jaw. I explained that, as he was aware, all of my parents’ friends thought a thirteen year old with a waterbed was unusual and the wave making mattress was always a source of conversation for them. They talked about it for a while because that waterbed went to college with me. In fact, it survived all the way to the altar when my wife decided it was a hideous piece of furniture that had no place in our home. I agreed and we sold it for fifteen dollars at a yard sale.

Peanut said he believed me, but I can tell when he's lying. A couple of other guys weren’t buying my story either. The absurb is always much more entertaining than reality.

I sent Jeannie an email informing her of that she was now perceived as a Mrs. Robinson clone. She was rather amused about the whole thing. Still, I hit the delete button and sent the wall posting into the cyberspace vacuum.

To be clear, Jeannie is not a Cougar and I have never played the boy-toy role that made Dustin Hoffman so famous. To be clearer, you should know that a keyboard accessing the World Wide Web is now more powerful and plentiful than the pen. Use it carefully.

So, happy birthday Jeannie or as many of my friends would tell you, “Coo-coo ca chu, Mrs. Robinson.”

The new urban venacular

2010-05-11T17:05:00.000-04:00

Bromance.

That’s relatively new and useless urban verbage describing the close relationship between two heterosexual males. Some homophobic guy came up with the term. He was probably afraid of what people might say about he and a buddy sharing a bucket of popcorn that was sitting in the empty seat between them while they were watching “Public Enemies” at the movie theatre.

I’ve always been partial to redneck slang which couldn’t embrace a bromance. However, when someone asked if Peanut Groves and I had a bromance, I went and looked it up. Urban Dictionary was my source and I can tell you that after reading what they had to say about a bromance, Peanut and I will opt to maintain the farmer slang term “buddy.” Bromance works for sharing popcorn, but it just doesn’t fit when you are blowing something up or pursuing defenseless animals with a firearm.

What I did find is that Urbandictionary.com is a useful source for vocabulary expansion. I encourage you to visit their site to learn new and improved descriptions of instances that you previously could not clearly define. I did that and found a number of favorites. Here’s a sampling:

Sinlaws – The parents of your live-in boyfriend/girlfriend.

Stall Waiting – When you realize that you and your neighbor have
finished using the bathroom at the same time so you delay exiting the stall a few seconds to avoid any uncomfortable eye contact or "excuse me"s while leaving the stall. Wait period is usually until the person reaches the buffer zone of the sink, where all normal social etiquettes are re-activated.

College morning – afternoon

Understandment - The combination of understanding and agreement. Used when talking about informal commitment.

Stealth-call - When you have to call someone back but don't want to talk to them, so you wait until you know they can't talk and leave a voice mail.

Recrap – To summarize a discussion composed largely of useless information.

Toilet Mummy – When someone is so concerned about toilet seat germs, the cover the seat with half a roll of toilet paper, leaving it to appear as if it has been mummified.

Best Behavior Friend - Also known as 'BBF'; a friend whom you have very little in common with and you act on your best-behavior when you're with. A best-behavior friend does not typically know the extent of your true character or transgressions because you misrepresent the truth to make yourself look good or innocent. A person with a best-behavior friendship may see the friendship as important or long-standing and so lying about situations or leaving out key facts becomes common.

Half-your-age-plus-seven – The rule to define the youngest that a romantic interest can be before the relationship is indecent.

Yawn pong - game played by tired people. In short, one person yawns and then the other person does. Should the original yawner yawn twice before the second person yawns once, player one has one point.

Redneck Teleprompter – Crib notes on a public speaker’s hand in order to remind him or her what to say during a speech or interview.

Mondaze – a daze you find yourself in due to it being Monday.

Time vampire – something or someone who literally sucks your time like a vampire sucking blood.

Text-hole – Someone who texts on their cellphone in really inappropriate places, like movie theatres, concerts, plays, or during sex.

Nearsighted date - As opposed to a blind date, where you have no idea what the other person looks like, a nearsighted date is one where you've seen a photo or chatted via web cam before meeting in person. This can often lead to disappointment if one person or the other has supplied misleading documentation.

Immaculate congestion - When traffic is backed up for miles on a highway, crawling along -- and then suddenly everyone returns to normal high speeds without passing an accident, stalled car, or road construction.
Objectively attractive - A phrase used by a spouse or significant other who is incapable of admitting they find another person truly handsome, beautiful, or sexually attractive.

Restless Lip Syndrome – When a person keeps interrupting a conversation and can't keep their mouth shut.

Cyberchondric – Someone who spends their time searching medical websites for diseases they convince themselves that they actually have.

Cougar - An older woman who frequents clubs in order to score with a much younger man. The cougar can be anyone from an overly surgically altered wind tunnel victim, to an absolute sad and bloated old horn-meister, to a real hottie. Cougars are gaining in popularity -- particularly the true hotties -- as young men find not only a sexual high, but many times a chick with her life together.

I’ll wrap this up because I’ve already pulled a short story long (telling a story that could have been told in a more concise way but is dragged out because the teller doesn't know how to tell a story).

As you go thru your week, I do hope you will remember these ever important words:

Semper Ubi Sub Ubi.

That’s a Latin phrase loosely translated to mean "always wear underwear."

That's advice to live by.

2010-04-26T09:26:00.001-04:00

I never liked George. The feeling was mutual.

I’ve mentioned this before.

George was an alligator who lived at Skull Lake twenty-five years ago. My job back then was to guide tour boats thru the Okefenokee Swamp Park. That’s where George and I met.

George’s home was only a little piece from the park and pretty easy to find – hit the main boat trail and bang a left at the turn to Fargo. Fifty yards or so later you cut down a little trail that looks like it disappears into a bunch of Hurrah bushes. When the trail opens up, you’ll see Skull Lake.

It must have been lonely out there because George was always running the reverse of that route back to the park.

The park was Oscar’s domain. He was estimated to be over thirteen feet in length and maintained a nasty disposition toward intruders. One-eyed Susie and Blind Susie, Oscar’s love interests, were one-gator women and didn’t take kindly to George’s intrusions either.

None of this deterred George when mating season rolled around each May.

Park employees had standing instructions to discourage George from hanging around whenever he showed up. George had a tendency to hiss, lunge and occasionally chase people. I only recall him chasing me and a few others, but he hissed at everyone.

Predatory gators scare tourists. Our job was to make the tourist happy. That meant chasing George away.

George slipped in and hid under the boat dock one May, Saturday morning. When my buddy, Peanut Groves, walked into the dock boathouse and announced George’s arrival, we followed our standing instructions.

We had a number of methods for running George off, but our favorite was getting Oscar or One-eyed Susie to kick his butt.

“I don’t know where Oscar is,” Peanut said. “Go get One-eyed Susie from in front of the Observatory and meet me under the bridge to the gator pen.”

Peanut crossed over a bridge to the other side of the boat trail and started thumping the top of a Tupperware container. George always followed that sound and eased down the length of the dock and into the waterway. Peanut walked on the bank ahead of him thumping the container.

I found One-eye sunning in front of the Observatory and called out to her. For some disturbing reason she responded better to my voice than anyone else’s. I kept calling her and walking down the bank toward Peanut. She kept following.

Peanut walked onto the bridge at about the same time, joining a few curious onlookers.

One-eyed Susie crossed under the bridge and locked eyes (or eye in her case) with George. Both froze in place. Their noses were about three feet apart and I was hoping they remembered that they were mortal enemies and didn’t engage in the mating ritual. That would have been embarrassing since we were promoting a fight.

We waited impatiently for one of them to attack, but they kept staring at each other.

“Go pull George’s tail,” Peanut said to me. “It’s your turn.”

I was prone to occasional fits of stupidity, so I walked onto the bank and made a wide arch to George’s backend. His tail stretched just out of the water and onto the bank. After working up some gumption, I darted forward, grabbed George’s tail, gave it a yank and sprinted away.

George yanked his head around to attack whatever was about to waylay him from behind. Seeing an exposed neck, One-eyed Susie opened her mouth and lit into him like a fat man eating bar-b-que.

George fought back and the two slashed around for about ten seconds before George beat a hasty retreat. Instead of basking in the glory of victory Susie swam hurriedly behind.

Peanut, a few tourists, and I gave chase yelling encouragement to Susie as we crossed the bridge leading back to the boat dock.

George was swimming as fast as he could, but Susie was gaining. George decided to take to land and ran underneath a boardwalk leading back toward Skull Lake. One-eyed Susie stayed close behind him.

They climbed over brush and around cypress knees before Susie stopped to rest. Peanut and I were running down the boardwalk stopping occasionally and sticking our heads underneath the planks to yell encouragement to Susie.

“Come on girl! Don’t quit now,” we’d scream every time Susie stopped to rest. She’d hear our call and start charging after George again.

The last time Peanut laid on his belly and stuck his head below the boardwalk he put his nose right in front of Susie’s. She lunged forward and snapped at Peanut instead of worrying about George.

Peanut screamed, jerked backward and hit his head on the handrail before rolling into the middle of the boardwalk.

I thought Peanut had died from sudden shock until I saw his chest heaving up and down and sweat beads bursting from his face. There was no blood coming from his head so I waited to see if he was going into coronary arrest or convulse in some sort of spasm. He did neither.

I could see George sliding into the water in the distance and hear Susie rustling around beneath us. I opted against sticking my head under the boardwalk to see which direction she was heading.

After a few minutes I reached down, grabbed Peanut’s hand and pulled him to his feet. He was pale, but since he wasn’t dead, I thought it was appropriate to laugh.

“I keep telling you that if ya get too close to a fight, you’ll end up in it,” I said between cackles.

I had forgotten that you get hit in the chest when you smart off to a teenage buddy. It hurt too.

Do you capitalize the "S" in south?

2010-04-14T08:28:00.001-04:00

I like to write, but I’m not very good when it comes to the proper use of the English language.

For instance, the “South” is the part of the country below the Mason-Dixon Line. You have to capitalize the “S” when you are referring to it . This is because the “South” is a proper noun. Those have to be capitalized.

South doesn’t have to be capitalized if you aren’t beginning a sentence with it or are referring to going in a direction. “Running to the south end of the woods and jumping over Pumpkinvine Creek was the only way Little Buck could escape that wild boar.” That is an example of a sentence where “south” does not have to be capitalized.

I have an undergraduate degree in English, another one in Communication, a minor in Journalism and am a lifelong Southerner (which I think also has to be capitalized). I should know this.

God forgive me, I didn’t until my daughter, Ellie, called me a few weeks ago. It was mid-morning and I was in a deep conversation about the recently passed healthcare bill’s impact on 2010 earnings for the Standard and Poors 500 Index. My cellphone rang and I saw Ellie’s name pop up on the screen. Fearing that she must be sick or otherwise traumatized by the middle school experience, I stopped talking business and answered her call.

“Daddy,” she said. “Do you capitalize the “S” in “the South?”

I paused briefly to convince myself that a gun must be pressed against her head to necessitate a call during school hours to ask me about capitalization.

“ I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve never been really good with punctuation, grammar and that kind of stuff.”

“So should it be capitalized?” she asked again.

Ellie uses a lot of text lingo. I’m convinced that is one of the things making her brain occasionally think sideways. The same illness plagues all of her teenage friends. They think sideways and are convinced their parents fell from yesterday’s turnip truck.

Knowing this, when she asks me to repeat myself I wonder if she’s dingy, deaf, or forgotten some of her native tongue’s basic terminology. I started to hang up and send a text message stating “idk dgi.” That’s text lingo for “I don’t know dad gum it.”

“I really don’t know,” I answered again, opting against a rude text message. “Where are you?!”

“I’m in school!” she said giggling. “Mrs. Gravley wanted to know.”

I could hear the roar of laughter in the background and knew immediately that her Language Teacher, Mrs. Gravley, was using one of my columns as an example of English Language errors and omissions. Mrs. Gravley is a good teacher, but needs fresh material. I give her plenty of examples each week.

I asked Ellie for the answer and she told me that the “S” should be capitalized. I laughed, told her to pack some more useful information between her ears and hung up.

When I got home that evening my youngest daughter, Maggie, was doing her homework. Maggie turns eleven next week and is in the fourth grade.

“Daddy, I can’t figure out which of these words are adjectives or adverbs,” she said.

I looked down at the paper she was holding out. It was littered with twenty words.

“Half of the words end with “ly,” she said.

This was true and meant absolutely nothing to me.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Well, which ones are adverbs?” she asked again as if a second question would kick in a superior intellect.

“idk dgi,” I said.

Maggie nodded her head and began working on her math homework. I opened my laptop and started looking on the Internet for examples of adverbs and adjectives.

When Ellie came home, she quoted a couple of language rules. Maggie listened, separated the adverbs from the adjectives and sat down to watch the previous night’s recording of American Idol.

Maybe that was yesterday’s Turnip Truck that I fell off of.

I don’t know if I am supposed to capitalize the ‘T” in turnip when referring to a vegetable truck. I don’t know if the “L” in “Language” or the “T” in teacher should be upper or lower case. I have the same trouble with the “L” after English and the T before “South.” I’m not real sure I should be using so many quotation marks. Then again, maybe I should have used more.

Usually if I'm not certain, I will mixed it all up so that I am half right.

Regardless, there are plenty of other mistakes up there and I am certain that language teachers everywhere can make use of a sentence ending in a preposition.

Fresh material. You’re welcome, Mrs. Gravley.

Baseball 2010 - This is how it's gonna happen

2010-04-14T08:25:00.000-04:00

I love baseball. I don’t know why, I just do.

My infatuation with the game isn’t the same as Kevin Costner’s in the movie Field of Dreams. That’s the flick where he saw dead men walk out of the cornfield and start playing games on a baseball diamond that he built. On screen that looked nice and romantic. In reality that type stuff gets you fitted for a straight jacket.

I don’t qualify for a straight jacket, but I do have about five thousand baseball cards, can quote batting lineup for the 1976 Cincinnati reds and recite, in order, all the World Series winners during my lifetime. I’ll tell you that it was Al Downing who served up the pitch Hank Aaron hit for home run number 715 and how Dave “Hendu” Henderson was a goat in the 1986 League Championship before hitting the home run that made him a hero.

If you want useless information on the game of baseball, or a strong opinion, I have both.

Each Spring I channel that zeal by reading magazines, studying past statistics, watching TV analysis so I know the teams and players. Then, trying to put aside my bias toward the Braves, Red Sox, and Cubs, I write down my predictions for the coming season. At the end of the World Series I look back at those predictions to judge my prognostications. The results usually prove the theory that it’s better to be a historian than a prophet.

However, this year the prophecy seems obvious for knowledgeable and objective fans such as myself. So, pay attention and I’ll tell you how the 2010 baseball season will unfold.

In the American League West the Seattle Mariners have the game’s best hitter in Ichiro Suzuki and the biggest clubhouse cancer in Milton Bradley. Meanwhile, Texas’ Rangers sport a potent lineup of hitters. These Rangers have never won a division title and are steered by a manager who tested positive for cocaine use last season. As for Oakland, Billy Beane is a great general manager, but he can’t hit or pitch. The A’s don’t have enough players that can either. The Rangers and/or Mariners will make a little noise before imploding and the Los Angeles Angels take the title, again.

My favorite team in the American League’s Central is last season’s champ, the Minnesota Twins. However, as much as I like them, they don’t have the pitching to repeat so put them in third place. Kansas City has a several young studs, a bunch of has beens and almost as many wanna bees. That makes them irrelevant and a cellar dweller. The battle for first will be between the Detroit Tigers and Chicago White Sox. The Tigers will have the same heart this season as they did last year when they collapsed down the stretch. Give the division title to the Sox with former Westminster and Georgia Dawg star Gordon Beckham playing a key role.

The AL East will produce the game’s best team, but it won’t be the World Series Champion New York Yankees. The Bronx Bombers wore out their starting pitchers last season and a bunch of tired arms won’t win baseball’s toughest division. Tampa’s Rays are the most complete team in their league and will translate that talent into a division title just as they did in 08. The Orioles have some great young talent, but not enough to make any noise. The O’s will avoid last place because the Blue Jays destroyed a good team. As for the Red Sox, put them in second place and a give them a wild card birth. Leave the Yankees at home for the postseason with a third place finish.

In the National League Central Eighty-five victories will win the division and the St. Louis Cardinals should be victorious that many times IF they can stay healthy. Milwaukee’s Brew Crew will put up a fight, but lack the pitching to overtake a healthy Cardinal team. The Cubs, Reds, and Astros will finish in that order. None of them will win more than they lose. The Pirates don’t look like Tarzan, but do play like Jane. They’re the biggest loser.

Over in the NL West, the Dodgers have talent and Joe Torre. That’s enough to hold off a good Rockies team. The Giants will finish third with an aging lineup and two star pitchers. Arizona and San Diego are a toss up at the bottom of the heap. Give a nod to the Padres who need young players like Cartersville’s Donovan Tate to develop into major leaguers sooner rather than later.

Close to home in the NL East, give the crown to the Phillies who are the league’s best team again after consecutive World Series appearances. The Mets claim a rash of injuries stole their competitiveness last year, but will find this season that their Achilles heel is a lack of starting pitching depth. The Marlins have the best farm system and shortstop in the game, but not enough of everything else to win more than eighty-five games. I don’t know why the Washington Nationals bother showing up.

The hometown Braves will find out that Jason Heyward is be the stud they need to complete their lineup. Coupled with a great pitching staff, a solid lineup and (hopefully) healthy Billy Wagner, the Bravos will capture second place in the division and a wild card birth in the playoffs.

The NL post-season is simple. The Braves will beat the Phillies. The Dodgers will beat the Cardinals. Then Bobby Cox’s Braves will top Torre’s Dodgers to make the World Series.

In the American League the Red Sox will beat the Angels and the Rays will top the White Sox. Boston will win a close series over the Rays and take the AL crown.

That puts my two favorite teams – the Braves and Red Sox – in the World Series. When it’s over Bobby Cox will retire with his second World Series championship.

Okay, I’m not really objective.

God bless you ... and me too

2010-03-30T16:32:00.002-04:00

“God bless ‘em.”

Wonderful saying, especially if you live in the South. You can say anything you want to about someone as long as you follow it up with a sincere, “God bless ‘em.” The key stipulation is the “God bless ‘em” has to be sincere or else the conversation is classified as spiteful gossip.

This tradition started with two women talking over a fence post in Folsom two hundred years ago. It had to be women that started it because they have more etiquette than men, God bless us. Of course, men quickly learned the benefit of a good “God bless ‘em.”

Asking God to bless someone is an act of brief prayer requesting the good Lord to help this person overcome the awful affliction or deed that is so disturbing it has to be discussed behind their back.

Of course a good “God bless ‘em” also absolves, in the speaker’s mind, any guilt associated with spreading innuendo and hearsay. It sounds like this:

“Tessie got stuck in the toilet when the seat broke. You know she was skinny as a rail in school, but never could take off that baby weight when her last kid was born. It looks like she put on another twenty sympathy pounds before her grandson was born. God bless her, she was stuck in that toilet for two hours before her husband got home and called a couple of neighbors to help pull her out.”

Here’s another one I heard a few years back:

“That home made dye job always turns Sallie Mae’s hair a gosh awful shade of light blue. God bless her, she’s so colorblind that she thinks it’s a pretty silver. I will have to say though that the lady at the dress shop does a great job of matching outfits to her hair.”

Some people even throw in a “Praise be” to start that last sentence. “Praise be’s” are a discussion for another day.

If you think it’s wrong to invoke God’s grace into such a conversation, you can always fall back on and, “it ain’t their fault.” Of course, “his” or “her” can be injected in the place of “their” as necessary.

My best recollection of a good “it ain’t his (or her) fault” is when Pork Chop Jones’ mama started talking about his girlfriend one day.

“Now that Mary Jo is nice and I know you boys can’t see past her caboose, but she’s got one big ole honker of a nose on her,” Mrs. Jones blurted out. “It’s none of her fault, really. Have you seen her daddy? His nose is so long and wide that you could have a tent revival under that thing.”

Pork Chop couldn’t see past her nose after that and broke up with Mary Jo two weeks later. Mary Jo went to a plastic surgeon a year later, had her nose cut back, was voted best looking in her senior class, and won three Spring Break bikini contests while she was in college. Turns out that sometimes you can fix an “ain’t their fault.”

Over half of the “It ain’t their fault” statements are usually blamed on a bad gene pool or parental neglect like:

“You know his daddy and mama have the same uncle. That’s why he looks the way he does. It ain’t his fault.”

Or, “It ain’t his fault every ground ball hits that boy in the eye. He’d be able to catch’em if his daddy took the time to bounce a couple toward his face in their backyard.”

There’s also the combination when somebody does something so bad that they need both a “God bless ‘em” and a “it ain’t their fault.”

“Bobby Joe cheated on his wife four times. He deserved it when she shot him in the backside with rock salt. It ain’t all Bobby Joe’s fault though. His daddy - God rest his wretched soul - he cheated on all six of his wives before that last one killed ‘em. God bless Bobby Joe, and especially that sweet wife of his and their three kids. I’m hopin’ that rock salt unlearned what his daddy taught ‘em.”

Then there are the folks that don’t use either the “God bless ‘em” or “it ain’t their fault” like an ole friend of mine named Joe.

Joe’s been around a while, is plainspoken, sometimes ornery, and always truthful. A while back we were standing around a couple of guys when he told me that he had something he wanted to ask me later. When we got outside he said he didn’t want one of the other guys to hear what he was saying.

“He’s got a chip on his shoulder and always has to throw something smart into a conversation,” Joe said. “Sometimes I have to bow up when he tells me what he thinks.”

I must have been looking cock-eyed after he said that because he felt the need to explain.

“I like him well enough – we eat dinner together a couple of times a month,” Joe continued. “That’s just what’s wrong with ‘em. I’ve told him so, but there’s no sense to keep pointing it out. He can’t fix it.

“Heck, everybody’s got something wrong with ‘em. I got plenty of my own faults. So do you. I know a couple of your’s and you know some of the others. That’s just the way it is. The last guy that was perfect got hung up on a cross.”

Smart man, ole Joe. God bless us each and every one.

Time to play ant god again

2010-03-22T09:31:00.000-04:00

It’s spring today so maybe we can celebrate the thawing of the great freeze of twenty-ten. My guess is we still need an Easter confirmation, but the winter solstice is in the books.

The thaw also marks the beginning of ant season. That’s when the little biting boogers come out of hibernation. Shortly thereafter mounds of dirt start cropping up on grassy lawns, concrete cracks and at the roots of trees and plants throughout the world.

I have always considered myself a god to the ants as I continually alter the course of their history. My earliest recollection of the little critters is when they would crawl around on the concrete steps outside of my house. I usually watched them for a few minutes and then squished them with my thumb.

Such was our relationship until I was five and went with my family to Thomasville. That’s where my aunt, uncle, and two cousins lived. They had anthills in their back yard that were higher than my knee. I had never seen ones that high before.

My cousin, Andy, warned me that his daddy told him not to bother the anthills because the ants could really hurt you. Great advice to give a four year-old, I thought, but I was bigger, older, and squished ants. I had nothing to fear.

As Andy and my sister watched in amazement, I retrieved a large stick and lopped off the top of the anthill. Immediately, ants rushed from the exposed mound to repair the damage caused by my stick wielding tantrum. Wanting to prove my invincibility to the onlookers, I put the end of my weapon into the opened mound and watched with delight as the ants climbed the timber ladder and scattered across my body.

Then the ants started eating me. Moving my five year-old legs as fast as they could go, I rushed into the house screaming for my mama who promptly stripped my clothing and tossed me into a tub of water. Thousands of ants rose to the water’s top as my cousin, Andy’s voice echoed down the hall, “I told him not to.”

At that moment, I became a wrathful ant god.

I imagined there was an ant scribe who penned the history of the great ant colonies. Painstakingly, he would document the glories, tragedies, and demise of their civilization. I considered it my job to give him adequate material.

I would find an anthill, drag over the water hose and turn it on until the dirt housing was properly flooded. This prompted the scribe to write of the “god’s displeasure with the ant colony’s failure to pay him proper homage.”

Next the ant scribe would write of the great meteor that crashed from the heavens into the colony. My favorite was his entry of the “the recurring plunder of the hammer and sickle thrashing away the dome of the mound each time it was rebuilt. The sickle struck repeatedly until the eggs of the colony’s future and the sacred lower temple of the Queen were exposed to the harshness of the world.”

It was all fun until the great fire of 1978.

I was over at my friend Little Buck Bradford’s house. He was Big Buck’s son. We were playing god to the ants and were about to crank the lawnmower when Little Buck’s Uncle Goose called for us to stop. There was a better way, Goose proclaimed. Using the lawnmower to play ant god worked pretty well because darkness covered the ant’s world until the mower was cranked and the spinning blade created enough wind to completely blow all the dirt and ants across the yard. Buck would stand next to the fallen colony and proclaim the writings of the scribe, “And a great darkness overcame the land followed by a roaring wind tossing aside the colony’s dome and sucking the valiant ant soldiers into the heavens!”

However, if there were a better and more destructive methods, we were all ears. This was our first mistake.

God bless him and rest his soul, Goose was a moron. His arms flapped up and down when he got excited, his neck was long, his nose pointy, his butt stuck up toward the sky, and his feet shuffled to the side instead of moving forward when he walked. All that made him look like a goofy goose so that’s what everybody called him. Little Buck didn’t bother injecting the “Uncle” part because admitting a relation to Goose could prove quite embarrassing. Big Buck didn’t claim him either. He said Goose’s elevator didn’t reach the top because he didn’t have an elevator.

The really weird part is that Little Buck and I listened to Goose. We were twelve and thought that being an adult remedied ignorance. Goose thought that too. We were all wrong.

“Go get some gasoline and matches,” Goose instructed. “We’re gonna torch this sucker.”

We dutifully followed his instructions, poured the gasoline over the anthill and stood over it as we dropped a lit match onto the gas soaked dirt. When the flame spit high into the air, Little Buck and I covered up and dove backward to the sound of Goose’s hysterical laughter. Then we stood back over the hill to survey the damage and image the entry that show up in the chronicles of ant history.

“A great and foul liquid descended from the sky saturating the mound. After the liquid subsided, a flaming torch fell from the havens and ignited a flame that instantly consumed the colony and sent all of its inhabitants to their doom save the Queen and her loyal servants. When the havoc subsided we saw the gods peering down upon us, their faces red, and the stench from their charred eyebrows filling the air.”

That’s what the ant scribe wrote. Now, he only talks about the poisonous white food brought by a treacherous soldier to the Queen causing her to convulse and die a painful death. It’s a common story around my yard. Boring, but common. After the great fire, Little Buck and I learned to embrace boring.

In case you are wondering the great fire was followed by Goose being tackled and beaten by two twelve year olds. The ants could’ve cared less.

2010-03-09T09:06:00.000-05:00

I put the forty-fourth year in the books yesterday and began working toward completion of number forty-five.

Forty-four. It’s a good number to be. Say it outloud and you’ll notice your tongue slapping the roof of your mouth like it’s applauding.
Then again, maybe it’s not. Nowpublic.com says age 44 sucks and 70 rules. They base this ridiculousness on a survey carried out jointly by a bunch of researchers at Warwick University and Dartmouth College. They concluded that happiness is U-shaped peaking when we are 20 and 70, but slumping in the middle.

That sounded like a chart, so I consulted one of the foremost studiers of stock charts in the world to confirm or debunk this myth. He plugged my data into his mathmatical model to measure my direction.

“It looks like a major sell-off making a downward move right outta the shoot,” he said. “That would have to be birth. When you think about it, birth is a really traumatic experience which is why you get here screaming and kicking and have so much trouble sleeping early on. Fortunately, God wipes that era from your memory.”

The Chart wizard continued, “There was a gradual uptrend until you hit a flat period from 16-18. I see that a lot - indifferent teenage years. Then there was an overall move upward marked by some really wild volatility between 18-22 when you tried more than you should and learned that you don’t know squat. Then there’ a big breakout to the upside at 23. That’s when you got married, isn’t it?

“Things kept moving up spiked higher at 30 and 33 when your girls were born; your trend was kind of bumpy after that mostly due to more pressure on money flow and time, but still an uptrend. The chart looks a little volatile since your oldest daughter hit thirteen, which is expected and might continue for a few years.”

Then he backed away from his computer model, pointed his hand toward the ground with his elbow up in the air so that his arm was in a forty-five degree angle.

“It’s a secular bullish uptrend,” he concluded motioning his right hand upward and downward over the slanted arm to mimick his description.

For those of you not familiar with Wall Street speak, bullish trends are positive and gain their name from the attack method of a bull which swings it’s head upward and propels it’s target into the air.

Bears, on the other hand, swat their victims with a downward swing, knocking them to the ground. Bulls propel your upward, bears knock you down. Bullish trends are good. Bearish ones bad.

Secular indicates a continuing long-term occurrence, one that goes on through the ages. If it's bullish, that's really good. If it's bearish, that's really bad.

In other words, I’ve been hit in the butt by a bull early and often and propelled uphill for ages.

So I’ve got that going for me.

That analysis was closely follwed by a call from Peanut Groves to remind me of my mortaility.

“Bet your back hurt when you got outta bed this morning and the glare off the top of your head hurt your eyes when you turned on the bathroom light,” he said with a laugh. “Ya know that you’re gonna see more of your lifetime looking in the rearview mirror than through the windshield.”

I offered a few observations about him that have to be omitted because they violate FCC guidelines for publication.

We talked a bit about days gone by, the ones we’re in and the ones to come. Most of it was about how the less than intelligent endeavors one or both of us had undertaken. That’s an ongoing conversation.

When I mentioned the study by the folks from Warwick and Dartmouth, Peanut echoed my thoughts.

“Those people think too much and thinking too much can make you stupid,” he said. “It’s like you always tell me: ‘statistics are great, but they can really screw up some perfectly good math.’”

I love it when people quote me, except for those times that I said something I don’t want to hear again.

We concluded that we have both spent enough time in the school of hard knocks to learn some things we’d just as soon not know and will probably learn more. The school of hard knocks educates people who do stupid stuff. If you take enough chances, you can get an advanced degree.

So, thanks to the 100 plus people who sent me happy birthday wishes on Facebook and everyone else who wished me well. It was a great day.

Also, if you missed it, don’t forget to offer belated birthday well wishes to Holden Hatfield, who turns 16 and Ansley Branch who’s hitting the first of the happiness peaks by turning 20. Christy Kautz, Beth Lane, Andrea Belisario are celebrating the beginning of a new year although I’m sure they don’t want to admit which one. Then, there’s the Shaq Attaq in Cleveland, OH where Shaquille O’Neal hits 38 and is pursuing another NBA title, this one with the Cavaliers. Shaq and I have a lot in common although I'm not sure exactly what it is.

I’m forty-four, have a great wife, two wonderful daughters, lots of friends, a great family and the long-term trend is bullish.

I’ll take that any day of the week and twice on Sunday.

Don't take your eye off the bear

2010-03-01T13:06:00.000-05:00

Hugh the bear was my friend.

He was about twenty-one years old, six feet or so tall, black fur and eyes and possessor of about six teeth. Hugh lived in the bear observatory at the Okefenokee Swamp Park. His job was to be watched thru a big glass window by tourists.

Being observed all the time isn’t an easy job, but Hugh was good at it. He laid in the shade, ambled over to his trough, ate, drank, stood up, scratched his back against a tree, yawned, and flopped back down in the shade. Every hour or so, Hugh would stroll up close to the window so people sitting behind it could ooh and ah while taking his picture. Then he’d drink some water, relieve himself and flop on the ground in the shade.

One of my jobs as a boat guide at the park was to feed Hugh on the weekend. Actually, it wasn’t my job, but I always went with the guy whose job it was because I liked petting Hugh. Reaching over a waist high fence and rubbing a bear’s neck while tourists take your picture makes you puff up and feel macho.

Things got even better on the days when Cassie, the ticket girl who worked in the gift shop went to the observatory. She got a break in the morning to wipe off the hand and face impressions all the little kids left after pressing their face against the window to watch the HughBear show.

Cassie was a blue eyed (bottle assisted) blonde with a bright smile, small waist and ideal proportions of everything else crammed into blue jeans and a tee-shirt. Her appeal was such that three months earlier she had placed second at the Spring Break Bikini Contest at Panama City. As fate would have it, the schedule for feeding Hugh coincided with Cassie wiping down the windows.

One day, I was putting Hugh’s food in his trough and had just started rubbing his neck when Cassie reached up to clean the upper portion of the window. Given such a distraction, I suddenly stopped scratching Hugh’s neck and focused on Cassie’s superb job of glass cleaning.

Hugh was a good bear, but he did have a character flaw of demanding someone’s undivided attention. When I began taking more interest in the blonde in the window than the bear at my feet, he bit the corner of my blue jeans and gave a tug.

This was about the same time that Cassie decided to stand on her tiptoes and reach high enough to fully expose her belly button. I was feeling more pull from her bellybutton than the bear yanking on my pants until the world flipped upside down and Hugh bent over and gently placed his paw against my chest and his nose next to mine.

He had my undivided attention.

My hands were on the ground, my feet sticking up in the air, and my legs leaning against the fence while bad bear breath filled my nostrils – not the way I had envisioned spending my morning. Fortunately, my mind was clear enough to know that moving quickly could be really bad for me.

I calculated how long it would take Hugh to eat me with only six teeth and launched into the 100th Psalm when Cassie started banging on the window.
I could barely see her out of the corner of my eye as she jumped up and down, waved her arms and screamed loudly. Normally, this would make my heart beat very quickly, but that process was already well underway and oddly enough anything she did at the moment seemed irrelevant to stimulation of my teenage hormones.

Hugh noticed though. He might have been a bear, but he was a guy and I had caught him oogling Cassie’s midriff on more than one occasion.

Hugh moved his nose and redirected his bad breath toward the window long enough for Tony, the guy who had been cleaning the snake cages, to help me drop my feet to the ground, take two steps back, leap over the fence and spring thru the safety of a metal door.

After that I still liked petting ole Hugh and he liked it too, I just did it after Cassie had cleaned the observation window.

This incident comes to mind often, sometimes waking me at night, others sending a quick chill down my spine. While I joke about it today, I knew as soon as I was flipped upside down that even bears in captivity can be lethal. I got lucky.

I watched last week the news reports of an Orca whale killing its trainer and other incidents caught on tape where trainers where attacked by whales.
I don’t know if keeping animals in captivity is right or wrong, if we learn enough about the animals to justify changing their lifestyle or if they are happier in captivity than where they would otherwise be.

The issue will be debated, some needed safety regulations will be implemented, we’ll all pray for the best, and probably continue paying to see these magnificent creatures out of their natural habitat.

I don’t completely agree with Roman philosopher Apuleis who pronounced that familiarity breeds contempt. However, in regards to wild animals, familiarity definitely causes people to let their guard down and open themselves to danger. I speak from firsthand experience.

Driving cars, recreational activities, and a number of jobs are as risky as training killer whales. We need improvement in all of these areas. Thinking today about our interaction with animals, I hope that we learn more from nature’s creatures so that fewer animal lovers suffer the fate of Dawn Bracheau and the grief suffered by her family and friends.

The Epiphany of Middle Age

2010-02-24T12:40:00.000-05:00

You don’t know you’re middle aged until you get there.

Even then you don’t think it’s happened until an epiphany smacks you.

This usually occurs when you are doing something simple like walking across a college campus, recalling yesterday when you were a scholar, and admiring the lovely co-eds.

Then, you realize that they think you look like their dad instead of their dream guy.

Looking in the nearest glass window, you see that you do look like their dad. That’s when the realization that you are middle age hits like an ocean wave that flips you upside down and forces a quick scramble to retrieve your bathing suit from around your knees.

The ocean wave sensation was overcoming me when my phone rang and the exasperated voice of Peanut Groves blared from the earpiece.

“Did you realize that we are middle aged?” he blurted. Kindred spirits like Peanut and me sometimes have the same sensations simultaneously. It’s kinda cool until he goes bungee jumping.

“According to the Oxford Dictionary we’re not going to be middle aged for another year,” I corrected him. “I had this weird dream where my teeth fell out and looked it up.”

“No, it’s already happening dude,” he replied. “My doctor looks like Doogie Howser, the genius kid doc from 1990’s TV. Having a doctor way younger than you is a sure sign that you are middle aged.”

“This boy can’t grow chest hair,” he continued. “He called me sir and asked when I had my last physical. When I told him 1989, he said I needed one and should get my prostate checked while I was at it.”

Peanut was too wound up to stop talking, “Getting your prostate checked is like drinking legally – you have to be a certain age to do it. I thought that age was, you know, old. I didn’t know it was now.”

When your doctor calls you sir and recommends regular prostate checks, you have officially lost the title of spring chicken.

These kind of epiphany moments are happening way too often. I was talking with this twenty-six year old St. Louis Cardinal baseball fan the other day and tried getting his goat about their blow-up in the 1985 World Series against the Kansas City Royals. It was called the” I-70 Showdown Series” because that’s the interstate linking the two Missouri cities.

He didn’t know what I was talking about. Then I realized that this guy was still feeding from a bottle when the Cards imploded in game seven. The MLB network is the only possible way he could see Cardinal pitcher, Joaquin Andujar, go ballistic on the mound before getting yanked from the game and beating the crap out of the clubhouse commode. That was a great moment in baseball history, for Royal fans at least.

We talked for a few more minutes and it dawned on me that some of the baseball players I had watched play in their prime had retired after a long career as a manager. Some of these guys had even coached their sons, who were now retired ballplayers.

That twenty-six year-old can’t recollect watching the Braves while holding a saran wrapped TV antenna so the players could be seen thru the fuzz of a WTCG broadcast. That’s what Ted Turner called his station when he was cable before cable was cool. In those days the Braves stunk worse than a roadkill skunk.

I remember when Russia was called the Soviet Union and they were trying to conquer Afghanistan. I remember Cheers coming on in prime time instead of syndication. I recall when belle bottom blue jeans went out of style the first time; Georgia Bulldogs games could be viewed for free from a railroad track or a bridge; Pittsburgh’s Pirates were World Series champs; and Terry Bradshaw won Super Bowls instead of talking about them.

I recall when my belly fit inside of my pants instead of over them; people had hair bigger than Rhode Island; car windows had to be rolled down; and Bruce Springsteen hadn’t lived long enough to get a lifetime achievement award at the Kennedy Center.

I remember when Neil Patrick Harris was a kid actor playing Doogie Howser, MD and not a thirty-six year old guest judge on American Idol.

I realized that Peanut hadn’t stopped talking, so I started listening again.

“I woke up this morning and decided I wasn’t going to put up with being middle aged,” he said. “So, I went ice climbing to prove to myself that I could still attack the world with the same reckless abandon as I did twenty years ago.”

“I thought the ice was thawing,” I said. “How’d that go for ya?”

“That’s how I met this new doctor” Peanut said. “Don’t be surprised if your shoulder hurts tomorrow.”

What's in a name?

2010-02-12T09:28:00.000-05:00

I got Joe Namath’s name wrong last week. Turns out he’s Joe Willie, not Willie Joe.

My friend, Randy Thompson, pointed this mistake out to me – twice. I guess he thought I was either too deaf to hear him the first time or too dense to remember. These assumptions have been made before.

Misnaming Joe happened because I failed to recall that Joe Willie was sired and reared in Pennsylvania, Beaver Falls to be precise, not the South.

At age eighteen Joe Willie figured out that the world is a lot hotter in Alabama and women wear less clothes to stay cool when the heat is turned up. Having seen a sixty plus year old Joe Willie twice tell ESPN’s Suzy Kolber that he really wanted to kiss her on national television, I’d say the less clothing rationale had more to do with his playing quarterback for Alabama than Bear Bryant’s coaching prowess. That's how he became an exchange student which is what what students from the north that came south for college were called in the sixties.

For the record, Suzy didn’t let old Joe lock lips with her. That might have something to do with the fact that she was three when the twenty-six year old Joe Willie led New York’s Jets to the 1968 Super Bowl crown. Propositioning a woman on national television while intoxicated lowers the odds of success too. I do understand where he was coming from since it was kinda sexy that she wanted to talk about football.

Given the ‘Bama connection, I reasoned that Namath’s name was Willie Joe instead of Joe Willie. In these parts you don’t find many double named people with Joe in leading part of the name instead of crunched in the middle. Every once in a while you’ll run across a Joe Bob, or Joe Don, but these names are not that common. Usually, if Joe is your first name you’re called Joe. We don’t typically call people Joe Willie in Dixie.
It’s counterintuitive.

Around here we have Billy Joe, Bobby Joe, Tommy Joe, Sallie Joe, Willie Joe, Betty Jo, Ricky Joe, Anna Jo, Ida Jo, Eddie Joe, Mary Jo, Vicki Jo, Nancy Jo, and Mojo. I only knew one guy named Mojo. He was a strange boy with a weird name. I never understood why a mama would do that to her kid. He moved to Iowa.

If you’re a William, you can also be called by some other derivative of your surname. My daddy skipped the William part altogether and went with Henry. People that call him William are trying to sell something and typically get hung up on.

When I played high school baseball a man named Mr. Willie used to umpire the games behind the plate. His oldest son Bill, who had been our second baseman the year before, umped in the field. The second son, William was pitching, another son, Wilbur, was the shortstop and the youngest of the clan, Wilfred, was at second. If William didn’t pitch he swapped positions with Wilbur or Wilfed. Willie squeezed the strike zone on all three boys and we rarely won. Willie’s wife, Betty Jo, fed him greens on the back steps after our games because he was too hard on the boys.

All this brings me to the point that Mamas and Daddies have to be careful about what they call their offspring. Names label a kid and shape what people think of them. Ask anybody named Judas.

Usually, the safest route is to tag your kid after someone in the family, preferably the richest aunt or uncle. If there are no rich aunts or uncles, the one giving the best Christmas gifts will suffice.

Once you have a name, a nickname is preferable too. Most newborns have long names that immediately are shortened to one or two syllables. Saying too many long words is confusing and can lead to tired tongue syndrome.

We named our oldest daughter Helen Ruth after her grandmothers. Neither one is rich, but one birthed me and the other one birthed my wife, Susan, so naming our first-born daughter after them made sense. We thought about the double name, but liked the nickname Ellie and found a book that said it was short (?) for Helen. She cooed once when we called her that and Ellie became her name. Around the house we sometimes call her Ellie Belle because family gets to have pet names for each other. If some stinky boy tries calling her that, I’m gonna break his arm.

So far, it all seems to be working well for her.

When our second daughter came along I wanted to call her Maggie. The same book we used the first time says Maggie is short for Margaret and since I had an aunt who gave me Christmas gifts and chocolate, it seemed reasonable to make that her first name. We crunched Louise in the middle because Maggie Lou sounds cute. It is also her mother’s middle name, which was an added bonus. Again, boys calling my youngest daughter Maggie Lou will be physically harmed and possibly introduced to my buddy Peanut Groves’ pet alligators.

That’s what I know about names and how people get them.

Mrs. Namath chose to name her boy Joseph William. I guess Joe Willie fits. He’s a Yankee (not that there’s anything wrong with that), played for Bear Bryant, was a Broadway and TV actor in some bit parts, a noted bachelor and womanizer, Panty Hose spokesman, Super Bowl MVP, and Hall of Fame quarterback. His knees are shot and Suzy Kolber doesn’t want to kiss him, at least not on national television during a Jets game.

I’ve always liked the guy. From now on I’ll get his name right so that Randy will stop reminding me that I screwed it up the first time.

Super Bowl Birthday

2010-02-06T11:49:00.002-05:00

The Super Bowl is turning 44 today. I’ll do the same in about six weeks.

Being inexplicably linked, I’ve made a point to honor this annual event with the same zeal shared by most red-blooded American males. Sorry ladies, but while there are exceptions, most women consider the Super Bowl a reason to gather socially with friends and discuss the merits of a new pair of shoes.

Men, on the other hand, always find a reason to like one team or dislike the other becoming impassioned enough about the outcome to throw popcorn and chicken wings at the television.

Being a man and a fanatic sports fan, it is encumbered upon me to remember all of the great games, which I have done faithfully.

I began with Super Bowl One which took place as my first year on earth was drawing to a close. Bart Starr, of Alabama Crimson Tide fame, threw seven completions to Max McGee, two for touchdowns, as the Green Bay Packers drubbed Buck “The Hammer” Buchanan and the Kansas City Chiefs 35-10. The game was called the NFL-AFL Championship and drew a sparse crowd of 61,000 people to the LA Coliseum. The place had enough seats for 101,000 butts.

McGee was in the latter stages of a productive career, but had caught only four passes the entire season. Word is he was hung-over on game day from staying out the night before. When first-string receiver Boyd Dowler separated his should and duty called, Max borrowed a teammate’s helmet because he didn’t bring his from the locker room. Starr was named the game’s most valuable player, but McGee became the hit of the day.

I always felt a kinship with ole Max McGee because on the same day in 1967 we both were staggering around and trying to keep from hitting our head as we played with a ball in front of a less than capacity crowd. McGee was avoiding the Chief's defenders while I was trying to keep from being popped by my older sister who had littler tolerance for me cooking the heads of her dolls inside of an Easy-Bake oven.

I’m told that I was so thrilled by Max’s exploits that I exuberantly threw both my bottle and pacifier at the black and white image of him racing across our television screen.

I paid little attention to the next several games as the Packers topped the Raiders the following season and Willie Joe Namath, another ‘Bama protégé, called an upset of the mighty Colts that his Jets famously pulled off.

I glanced in during 1970 to see Lenny Dawson and the Chiefs secure the AFL’s legitimacy by overtaking Minnesota’s Purple People Eating Vikings 23-7. Later, I was unimpressed when Jimmy O’Brien ended the 1971 contest with a field goal and a 16-13 Colt victory over Dallas’ Cowboys. My recollection of these games is very weak as I chose instead to ride my choo-choo train through the house and review the outcomes several years later after I learned to read.

As the years progressed, I somehow always knew who won the big game in spite of never sitting still long enough to watch much of it. There was Roger Staubach leading the Cowboys to a lopsided win over the Dolphins; and the Dolphins back-to-back victories with a No-Name Defense that helped record the only undefeated season in 1973.

I started paying close attention after becoming a fan of Terry Bradshaw, Franco Harris, Lynn Swann and the Steel Curtain as Pittsburgh won back-to-back trophies in the mid-seventies. I hated it for Fran Tarkenton and the Vikings in 1977 when they dropped their third title game in four years to the Raiders, but loved the those same Raiders when they won the title in 1982 and again in ’84.

I pulled for the Cowboys under Roger Staubach, but happily waived a Steeler Terrible Towel when the Cowboys lost to Pittsburgh in 1980. I hitched my wagon to the 49ers, Bears and Giants during the eighties and early nineties, but wrongly rooted for the Bills, Chargers, Steelers and Falcons over the nest eight years.

Choosing the Falcons and former Georgia Tech coach Bobby Ross’ Chargers were cases of sentiment besting common sense, but games of passion do call require occasionally listening to the heart. Twice during the nineties, I sided with Brett Favre and the Packers who’s two-game split almost salvaged a decade of lost Super Bowls.

Since the century turned over, I’ve been a fan of the Patriots, Buccaneers, Colts, Rams (but only in 2000) and, of course, the Steelers. I rooted for the Giants when they lost and against them when they won, so I’m thankful they aren’t on the big stage this season.

2010 presents a dilemma the likes of which I can’t recall. I’m a Peyton Manning fan, but have always had a soft spot for the Saints and the dozen or more volunteer jazz bands that populate their stands. It’s hard not to root for a perennial loser such as the Saints.

That being the case, I placed my annual $20 wager with my buddy Peanut Groves that the Saints will take the game. However, I bet the same twenty dollars with his uncle Bud that the Colts will be victorious. Both of them gave me more points than the betting line so there is a possibility that I could win both bets, but no chance that I will actually lose money. I am fond of using hedging strategies.

I haven’t figured out exactly who I will end up rooting for. As is often the case when I am in doubt, I will most likely be a fan for the team that is ahead, that is, until they get behind. As you can surmise, I love nostalgia, but hate to loose.

Force me to choose and I’ll tell you that my heart picks the Saints, but practicality tells me to go with the Colts. Practical decisions usually produce the best results.

If I am fortunate enough to become old, feeble and somewhat forgetful, I have little doubt that I will still be able to name all of our country’s presidents, the World Series champions, each Heisman Trophy winner during my lifetime, and all of the Super Bowl winners. The last one is the easiest since we’re the same age.

Enjoy the game.

Ya’ll probably need to work on your speakin’

2010-02-06T11:43:00.000-05:00

When I was running for office a few years ago, a fella called to ask me some questions.

I answered five or six of his queries before he got to the last one.

“You sound like you’re from Indiana or Ohio. Which one is it?”

“Say what?” I responded.

I have lived in every corner of the state of Georgia and gone to college right smack in the middle at Mercer University. I grew up driving boats in a swamp two hundred and fifty miles south of this ole boy’s stomping grounds and I had never even been to Indiana or Ohio.

Likening a distinguished southern gentleman reared below the Mason Dixon line to a hick from French Lick, Indiana constitutes fighting words and I bit a hole in my tongue trying to not express my opinion.

For the record, there’s nothing wrong with the good people from Indiana or Ohio. In fact, I’ve befriended a number of them that had the good sense to move from there to here. They have their own quirks that come from being born up there, but on the whole, they’re good reliable people.

It probably shouldn’t have, but the insinuation of me being a Yank bothered me so I recorded myself talking on the phone one day. It was disturbing when I realized I had lost some of my drawl. I actually said “You guys” once instead of ya’ll.

That’s a problem. Ya’ll is the contraction of you all and the foundation of the southern dialect. Failure to use it, or it’s plurals – ya’ll all, or all ya’ll - is a sure tip that you ain’t from God’s country.

“You guys” has infiltrated southern speak to the point where anyone within fifty miles of an urban area hears it enough to begin making the term a staple of their vocabulary. The youngest generation has even blended the term together with their ancestors’ southern speak to come up with, “ya’ll guys.”

The fact is your grandmama’s southern language is a disappearing and those of us growing up down here are starting to sound like those of them that moved here.

Recognizing my shortcomings of my native toungue, I referred back to the handy book, “Southern Talk” so that I could reinsert my ancestral dialect into my daily conversations. So that you may do likewise I have included some of the southern speak foundations. Here are a few:

“Fixin’” which is southern for planning on, such as “I’m fixin’ to box some ears if you young-uns don’t behave.

“You’uns” which is sorta like ya’ll except that it means you people. You’ll hear it in a sentence like, “You’uns ought to come eat ribs with we’uns tonight.”

“Took a notion” like “Pork Chop took a notion to wallop Peanut on account of him being sweet on Pork Chop’s girl.”

“Smidgen” – a small amount as in, “Those green beans would be a heap better with a smidgen more of fatback.”

“Over yonder” which others refer to as over there. “You’uns should go over yonder to see the flowers Bobby Sue planted in the truck tires.”

“Now and agin” as in, “I used to see Betty now and agin, but not since she ran off with Norma’s man.”

“Make tracks” – get going. “If a man can’t act like an’ talk like a gentleman around my womenfolks he better be ready to make tracks in a quick hurry.”

“Hide ner hair of” which means you can’t find something like, “I ain’t seen hide ner hair of Uncle Oscar since he went of diving in gator holes.”

“Dogged if I know” which you hear in sentences such as “Uncle Elbert has a still near Green River, but dogged if I know exactly where.”

“Bad off” which is southern speak for very sick such as, “He was really bad off after he ate all them hard boiled eggs.”

So there you have a few basics of the southern vernacular. You can get more from Ray Cunningham’s book “Southern Talk” if you can find it. Use what you learn in there and nobody will accuse you of being from the northern lands.

As for my conversation with the guy who thought I was a Yankee, he told me that he was one hundred percent sure my opponent was from ‘round here, but liked what I was saying even if I sounded like I was from Indiana, but he wasn’t sure who he was going to vote for.

Then he asked where and when he needed to cast his ballot. The Election Day was Tuesday; November 8, and based on where he lived he was supposed to vote at the chamber of commerce in Cartersville.

“I tell you what,” I said. “Why don’t you vote Wednesday at city hall in Euharlee.”

Some insults, you just can’t get past.

You better be tough if your gonna be stupid

2010-01-23T14:23:00.001-05:00

Downward Dawg.

That’s a snow skiing term. Up north and out west, where most of the skiing occurs, they term it “Downward Dog”. Around here, we use the proper pronunciation of dawg, even if you’re a Tech fan.

If you haven’t heard of the Downward Dawg move, it’s probably because no broadcaster has ever used the term to describe anything done by Brodie Miller or any other downhill skiing champion. They don’t do Downward Dawgs.

Downward Dawg is a move practiced mostly by beginners and those who are in over their head. These people have not mastered the essential ingredient of snow skiing – remaining upright.

Assuming the Downward Dawg position is no easy task. If you are so inclined to attempt this feat, I will outline the process.
First you have to commit to tackling a slope that exceeds your ability to remain vertical. Unfortunately, the revelation that you are somewhere you should not be doesn’t occur until halfway down the hill. That is when you realize that the likelihood of not falling is slightly less than a hungry hog refusing to eat slop.

It’s this discovery that prompts you to slow down by attempting to turn and ski across the mountain. Complications arise at this point.
As your speed surpasses your ability and you start the momentum slowdown by leaning hard on one ski, the spinout version of your trip down the hill will begin.

If you find yourself still upright after the spin, a 33% probability, you will be facing toward the top of the mountain instead of the bottom. This is the wrong direction. You will also be bent completely over with the backend of your skis crossed. The next move will be a gradual slide toward the hill’s bottom.

As this slippage occurs the front end of your skis will point in different directions and spread your legs farther and farther apart until you have maximized the elasticity of your groin. Your next battle will be struggling against the earth’s gravitational pull so that your nose is not planted in the snow.

Once your rear end is higher than your head, hands on the ground, feet slipping farther apart and everything slowly sliding downhill, you will be in the Downward Dawg position. You will not enjoy it, but there are much worse things.

Spinning and failing to properly assume the Downward Dawg position usually results in a backward fall that bangs your head into the packed snow, skiddin you down the mountain and leaving your spine ticked off enough about the whole incident that it throbs for several days. This is the Concussion Catapult.

Concussion Catapults are not recommended by the American Association of Neurological Surgeons or the surgeon general.

Last week, after a three-year skiing hiatus, I helped chaperon my church’s youth group on a ski trip. Once again, I proved my expertise at the Downward Dawg and proper execution the concussion catapult without the concussion part.

If you want to see video proof of my expertise, you can witness the hilarity on YouTube by typing “Mike ski ballet” into the search box. My cohorts Steve Friedrich and Jim Andrews filmed my worst moment on skis and posted it on the worldwide web. Steve provides commentary. Jim just laughs.

For the record, I switched to shorter skis, the number of skiers getting in my way decreased, and I conquered all the treeless slopes without falling before coming home. I even mastered those tagged as double black (really hard). That’s caught on film too because Steve kept following me around with the camera waiting on a sequel to the ballet. Footage of the successful runs weren’t funny so they didn’t make it to the internet.

The YouTube video had been broadcasting for about a day when my phone rang.

“Didn’t I tell you last year after I got whiplash riding bulls that we’re getting too old to do the same stupid stuff we used to?” It was my buddy Peanut Groves and he actually made that statement after dislocating his shoulder tipping cows three years earlier.

Peanut’s mouth was in motion so the lecture continued until he concluded with, “Doesn’t one of your friends tell his boys, ‘you better be tough if you’re gonna be stupid.’ When you hit your mid-forties you’ve taken too many jolts to keep being stupid.”

Common sense advice from a guy named after a nut. That’s not an everyday occurrence.

I’m taking my youngest daughter, Maggie, skiing in three weeks. Maybe instead of trying to tackle all of the steep slopes, I’ll just try to avoid doing a Downward Dawg or a Concussion Catapult.

The Dim Wit and the Teenager

2010-01-10T22:20:00.001-05:00

My oldest daughter, Ellie, turned thirteen the day after Thanksgiving.

Ellie is a great kid who makes straight A’s in school, treats people with respect and has a great sense of humor. I’m really proud of her.

The trouble is she’s a teenager and has the same inflictions as all teens - her intelligence is increasing at a rapid pace while my brainpower is making a hasty retreat. At least that’s how she sees it.

So, it was on Ellie's thirteenth birthday that my IQ dropped ten points. So did my wife’s.

I’m told this phenomenon follows the natural order of the universe – kids grow up and the parents dumb down.

I have consulted a number of sages regarding this condition and discovered that it follows what is known in practical academic circles as the “Parental Intelligence Curve.”

The first point of this curve starts when the child is born and the line actually juts up immediately throughout the early stages of parenthood. During this period the child believes their parents’ word is the definitive law and close many arguments with their friends by making the emphatic statement “My daddy (or mama) said….”

This is the curve’s high point.

Later, when the child hits the ten to eleven year old age range, the Parental Intelligence Curve gradually begins to turn downward. Once the child’s age reaches twelve the downward slope of the curve increases. At child’s age of thirteen, the slope of the curve begins a free fall.

I’m told the curve bottoms when the child turns sixteen and starting a “U” shape recovery that turns up ever so slightly at the teen’s age of 18. The line then gradually turns upward before leveling off to its rightful slightly upward slope when the offspring reaches age 25.

Right now, I’m in the freefall stage and my lack of intelligence is showing up on a more regular basis.

One such instance was last week, when an artic blast hit North Georgia. Ellie, the teenager, started walking toward the door to leave for school. She was wearing a thin long sleeve sweater over a tank top. I assumed she was rushing and had forgotten an essential piece of clothing.

“It’s twenty-nine degrees out there, so go back and get your coat kiddo,” I said. “make sure it’s the heavy one, not that light weight sucker.”

Ellie briefly protested that we were going to be late for school, but relented when she saw I was not moving toward the door. She returned with the heavy coat, threw her purse over her shoulder and folded the coat over one arm as we left the house.

“Are you going to put the coat on,” I asked before we got into the truck.

“I’m wearing a sweater and I’m not cold yet,” she replied as she stepped into the vehicle.

I dropped my head and looked over the top of my glasses at her.

“Heaven forbid you take a pre-emptive strike against Mother Nature,” I quipped.

She then looked over at me, furrowed her brow and rolled her eyes before turning her head away. I could hear the voice in her head saying, "Whateverrrr..."

That’s the “you are so clueless look”, not to be confused with the “OMG look” where she leans her shoulders forward, drops her jaw, crinkles her nose, and slightly squints her eyes. The OMG look usually translates as “I can’t believe you won’t let me do this,” but can also mean “Seriously? You are kidding, aren’t you?”

For those of you whose teenager transformed back into a person some time back, “OMG” stands for Oh My God. My wife and I do insist that “Gosh” serve as the translation for “God” so that none of the commandments outlined by Moses are broken.

I have identified ten other body language formations indicating my loss of intelligence. They vary tremendously and seem to be multiplying. I keep Googling for material with showing comprehensive illustrations of all of these postures and their meaning, but have not located such a manuscript. Please notify me if you are aware of where one is located.

Once my daughter has finished rolling her eyes, we go pick up two other teenage girls so that I can become three times as dumb as I was when I woke up. Both of the girls we picked up were carrying their coats to the truck. Evidentially, they were not cold yet either. I didn’t bother to comment.

The girls babbled all the way to the school. I assumed they were trying to stay warm by creating friction with their gums.

Once we arrived at the middle school, they said good-bye and hopped out of the truck. I could hear my daughter’s teeth chattering from the cold as she switched arms to carry her coat.

I’m gonna turn on the air conditioner the next time North Georgia is hit with an artic blast and Ellie gets in my truck without a coat. That will invoke the frenzied “stop that you completely insane man look."

No sense in waiting three more years to hit the bottom of that curve.

Don't give me a gun

2010-01-03T19:16:00.002-05:00

Eight deer crossed my front yard last week. They do it almost every day at sunset.

That’s not unusual in some places, but I live in a subdivision of about forty houses. There are thirty houses behind me, about seventy next to us, and another sixty or so and a small commercial area in a nearby place I call over yonder.

My guess is the deer know the city ordinances against killing them and are heading over yonder to the nearby bakery for some chocolate covered doughnuts.

All of them stop and look at me when they pass. I can see in their eyes that they’ve heard of my prowess as a hunter. They communicate silently, but I know what they’re saying.

“He’s the man that shot that US Marshall’s truck while he was hunting.”

All of them They seem to giggle and then meander on into a neighbor’s yard. They deviate their course avoid Jim Ellenburg’s property on top of the hill because he usually has one of their kin on the grill. Then they scamper away toward the doughnuts.

I shot a US Marshall’s truck and didn’t go to jail. Bet there are less than a hundred people in the country that can say that. Wish I wasn't one of them.

That Marshall would have been alright with me shooting his truck if there had been a deer standing in front of it and the bullet had passed thru the animal's neck. That’s not how it went down though.

It was nearly thirty years ago and I was fifteen miles inland from Georgia’s coastline in Camden County. J.E. Luckie had taken me there with the intention of bringing home some deer meat. I had never been deer hunting before. That was an obvious disconnect that we both ignored.

Luckie, as most people called him, was a mountain of a man who worked on an as needed basis as a US Marshall. He had retired from that group a few years earlier.

Luckie stood six-foot-seven inches tall. Staring him in the eye for more than a few minutes would have given you a crick in your neck. His hands could hide a Coke can and grip like a vice. His body was lean; his face was long and often sported an intimidating stone cold glare. He looked every bit the stereotypical lawmen you expect to see in a 1970’s vintage get the bad guy show.

“Yessuh,” was the proper response when Luckie gave instructions.

Both of my grandfathers died before I was born and Luckie had decided that an older retired guy needed to spend some time with me. Over the years he had taken me bird hunting and fishing a number of times. When he asked if
I wanted to slay Bambi, I jumped at the opportunity.

I liked Luckie. It wasn’t a hard thing to do. He had that gruff exterior and made the most of the few words he spoke so that he didn’t have to talk often or repeat himself. His wit was dry and quick, his nature good and even. I never saw him angry and everyone knew that his integrity and honesty were unquestioned. He cleaned most of what we caught or killed too. That was a real kicker.

We were both hoping that we would have something to clean when we and the other members of the hunt club released the dogs a few minutes before sunrise. Dogs chasing deer into a clearing so they can be shot is legal in Camden County. Don’t try it anywhere else.

Later, when the dogs passed mine and Luckie’s stands without scaring anything up, we went back to the camp to see which tract of woods would be run next. That’s when I fell asleep in the cab of his International Scout.

Three shotguns were on the bench seat of the truck, their butts resting against the back cushion, their barrels pointed at the floorboard. I sat down next to them, crossed my feet and wedged my boot next to the barrels.
I didn’t realize at the time that one of the guns had a shell in the chamber. I know it wasn’t Luckie’s gun and have always maintained that the loaded rifle belonged to Pork Chop Jones. Pork Chop was hunting with us and maintains that the loaded gun was mine. We were shooting the same type gun and no one ever verified the perpetrating firearm. It was Pork Chops’.

I was snoring pretty good when Pork Chop opened the passenger door and shook my shoulder.

“They’re running a …,” Pork Chop yelled. My fingers were tangled in a gun’s trigger and my palm had pressed the safety switch. I jerked toward the open door and a loud boom rattled the truck cab before Pork Chop could spit out the word “deer.”

My ears started ringing. My foot went numb and I got a sick feeling that some of my little piggies were no longer attached. As I rolled out of the truck, I saw that the black mark on my boot was gunpowder instead of blood. Seeing that made fainting an unnecessary, but still somewhat viable option.

I was laying on the ground watching the front tire deflate when Luckie determined the shot was five-hundred feet away instead of five. A couple of thousand hours at a firing range make you hear that way.

Figuring that deer were being shot somewhere and wanting a piece of the action, Luckie jumped in the truck and cranked it up. He shouted for me to get in, threw the gear shift into drive and was about to press the gas when he noticed the smoke in the cab and the right front end of the vehicle pointing toward the ground.

“Mr. Luckie,” I stood up and shouted thru the open window. “You can’t go anywhere. I just shot your truck.”

It’s terribly embarrassing to tell a man that.

Luckie got out of the truck, looked over the situation and confirmed that the buckshot had blown a hole in the floorboard and killed the front tire. There were no other casualties. We changed the tire and continued the hunt.

After that Luckie and I stuck to fishing.

Luckie passed away almost fourteen years ago. He thought I needed an older guy to spend time with so he made sure I had one. He was right and
I’m a better man for having him around. One day, when I’m a retired guy,
I’m going to try to be like Luckie. I don’t want anyone shooting my truck though.

When I got into the investment business, my manager, a great guy named Gaddis, told me that Luckie was one of his clients. He called Luckie and told him that he had hired me. Gaddis said Luckie grunted, which was his form of laughter.

“Good boy,” Luckie said. “Don’t give’em a gun.”

The fat man in the red suit is coming Thursday

2009-12-21T08:02:00.002-05:00

Don’t forget, Thursday night - Fat man, red suit, your house, when the family’s in bed.

Most folks, including myself, are not fond of uninvited late night houseguests. Usually, such folks are considered intruders and prompt a variety greetings including a .357 in the face, baseball bat to the ribs, fourteen inch officially licensed Rambo knife slashed across the chest, or a large hard object hurled thru the air at the perpetrators head.

All of these methods are acceptable greetings for most late night intruders.

Unless it’s Christmas Eve.

On Thursday the guy arriving at your house will be bearing gifts instead of trying to take them. That being the case, I recommend you be nice to him.

With that in mind, there are a few hospitality basics that you would be wise to follow:

Turn off the fire. In 1824 Santa made a breakthrough in molecular chemistry that has stumped those studying quantum mechanics ever since.

In short, Santa figured out how to cut his home entry time by sixty percent thru what he terms molecular recomposition. The process is kinda like the trick Kirk and Spock pulled on Star Trek where transformers beamed them all over the universe. Santa does it from the sleigh and gets his giggles out of entering thru the fireplace. He’s been advised against such entries, but something about zipping down a chimney in a molecularly decomposed state cranks his motor.

I say turn off the fire because since the advent of gas logs Santa hasn’t been able to if tell a one thousand degree hot spot is at the bottom of his intended descent until he gets there. Regular fire puts out smoke which is easy to see coming out of the chimney. He’s figured out how to deal with that.

Gas doesn’t put out smoke and the ole boy hasn’t concocted a way to completely avoid its flames.

Santa has a fire retardant suit, but it doesn’t stop a significant
bun heating episode or even flaming up presents. When someone is bringing you gifts, you don’t want to burn the gift or the giver’s backside. Turn off the fire.

Put up the gun for the night.

Being shot is a major deterrent to visiting a house.

After a 1686 near death experience in Germany, Santa’s elves developed a bulletproof body suit. The first one weight a ton, but over time the elves have pioneered some breakthroughs that have even been adopted by militaries and police forces around the world (although they are not available to the Taliban). While the suit is effective, a gunshot to the chest can crack a few ribs and might put you on the naughty list for the following year.

Leave out low-fat foods for Santa.

We all like to leave Santa snacks. That usually means putting some cookies or cake on a plate next to a glass of whole milk. You need to switch that to carrots or broccoli and low-fat milk.

Santa, God bless him, is a fat elf and there are health problems associated with being overweight can cause. I talked with Santa’s personal physician at a dinner party one night and he broke a dozen HIPPA laws by spilling the beans that Santa’s cholesterol was over 200 in spite of medication, his blood pressure is elevated, he’s borderline diabetic, and he flunked the stress test.

With all those problems, you see why I recommend veggies for St. Nick instead of cookies. He won’t like it as much, but Mrs. Claus will love you and a sleeker Santa will be back next year.

Oh, yeah and don’t put out high fiber foods or anything else that might create reindeer flatulence. Given the proximity of Santa’s sleigh to the Dasher and the boys... I’ll let you figure out the details on that one.

Make sure your Christmas lights are on.

Most people think lights are for decoration, but in truth they are landing markers. Santa has all the latest technology on the sleigh, but the reindeer still do things the old fashion way.

So there you have it. Follow those four tips and the jolly ole elf will have an easy time getting in and out of your house. He might leave what you asked for in between, provided you are not on the naughty list.

If you want to know what the people on the naughty list get, call me and I’ll tell you. I’ve been there a time or two.

Merry Christmas.

Elfs make terrible houseguests

2009-12-15T18:15:00.000-05:00

We have elves at our house.

They’re wreaking havoc. It seems that’s what they do best.

These elves took up temporary residence in our humble abode last Christmas season.

I didn’t invite them. My daughters did. They came back this year.

The little dwarfs show up December 5, and leave on Christmas Day.

Getting elves to come stay with you only takes a simple request from a kid that believes in the generosity of the jolly ole fat man dressed in red (that’d be Santa Claus for those Scrooges of you out there).

Santa is a big elf himself and several years ago implemented the policy of sending his little sprites ahead to children that requested them. The North Pole News says this is a test being run by Claus LLC, the non-profit agency that is the driving force by Santa’s production and delivery system.

According The News, a number of years back Santa’s board of directors plotted the trend of world population growth. Seeing an alarming rising trend, they recognized that covering all of the good boy and girl rooftops would soon be impossible under their existing system. That necessitated opening up other delivery channels.

This proved a boom for Fedex, UPS, and the Post Office, but even at discount rates those systems are only cost effective in a handful of densely populated areas which does not include areas like Cartersville, Georgia.

Citing cost containment and the continuing rise in population, the board decided they could either make the criteria for being good more stringent or find alternative delivery systems. Wanting to follow their mission statement of spreading joy, the board called on some six sigma trained engineer quants to design a method of enhanced product delivery.

Enter the elves. I haven’t figured out their role in the delivery equation as it occurs while I sleep and The News won’t disclose it. Claus, LLC is more secretive about the intricacies of their system than Coke is about their secret formula.

Participation in the new delivery system is quite simple. Kids write Santa a letter requesting an elf. The next day, one elf per child appears somewhere in the house.

Once the relationship between elf and child is cemented the same elves return every year.

These aren’t regular elves though. These gnomes are about a foot long, made of cloth and dressed in your typical red and green elf outfits with one of those funny looking pointy hats on their head. They have names too. Whitney and Victoria are the ones that come to our house.

Some people refer to these elves as Elf on a Shelf, which my girls tell me ours aren’t. I have noticed they don’t sit on shelves much.
Our elves are not like the store bought ones that you see in local shops several miles from your home. No, our elves came from the same tribe as those of my oldest daughter’s best friend. They hail from a land far, far, away lying over many hills and valleys that are only traversed in great haste during the darkness of night. You might recognize a story between those lines.

The elves hang out in stockings that are placed in various, sometimes hard to reach places in my girls’ rooms.

During the night, the nymphs magically turn into flesh and blood. This is what makes them irregular and starts the mayhem.

The elves run around the house performing crazy and destructive acts. The first night they were here this year, they jumped head first into the Christmas tree. When I got up, ornaments were knocked on the ground, presents were strewn all over the place, and Victoria and Whitney were clinging to tree branches.

The next night Whitney and Victoria were hanging from the Grandfather clock. Whitney had her legs wrapped around the top of the clock with her head resting against the half past the hour mark. Victoria was clinging to the key that she had evidentially turned to open the clock’s glass door.

Two nights ago, they rolled the dining room with toilet paper.

Last night one of Maggie’s friends came over with her elf, Ansley. This morning the three elves had made a tent with the kitchen table’s tablecloth. They spent the night playing in the floor - Victoria was sitting under the tent with napkins holders on her arms, Ansley was rolling around in a red plastic cup that looked just like the one Whitney was using as a drum. They had also filled the floor with everything within reach.

I’m thinking Santa only gives the off base assignment to the hyperactive elves that get under his skin.

When it gets close to Christmas, the elves begin the countdown to the big day. Our elves start this on the fifth day before Christmas. They’ll line the kitchen floor with crackers in the shape of a five. Knock over all the Nutcrackers in the house and make a figure four out of them and use other destructive methods to continue the countdown.

On Christmas Eve last year, they broke out a stepladder, climbed that sucker and used it to connect strung together rubber bands from the basement ceiling to all points in the room. They taped a large number “one” on the floor to signify that tomorrow was the big day.

Every time I see the mess they make of my house, I think of sending those bloomin’ elves back home with a nasty note to the six sigma boys that thought sending them was a good idea.

Then I see the excitement in my girls’ eyes and the laughter in their voice at what these mischievous misfits have done. That makes me want to thank those six sigma engineers for sending the little fairies.

Dang elves drive me crazy and make me like Christmas even more. Go figure.

The Over/Under on Turkey Day

2009-12-02T16:51:00.002-05:00

The Thanksgiving feast is done.

My over/under for the gorge this year was three pounds.

The over/under Turkey Day bet is between me and my friend Peanut Groves. The wager is a dollar that never gets paid.

For those of you not familiar with the over/under bet, it is a gamble dreamed up by Las Vegas bookies wanting to dupe a few suckers into losing money. To pull off this sting the odds makers pick a number for any contest, such as the combined points scored by two football teams. Betting the over means you think the number will be exceeded. The under bet is the opposite.

Peanut and I play oddsmakers and this year he put his Turkey Day over/under at seven pounds. That’s the highest mark in contest history. Seven pounds is what your heart weighs. It’s more than the poundage of most newborn babies. It’s almost four times the load of a good Porter House steak. I took the under and tripled the bet.

He took the over on me, we exchanged a little smack talk and the contest was on.

My holiday season begins with a trip to mama and daddy’s. Mama always puts a whole bunch of the fixings on the table – green beans, squash casserole, turkey, dressing with giblet gravy, rolls, mac and cheese for the kids, ham, and a sweet potato soufflé that my sister brings.

When everyone has finished the first round and devoured seconds of their favorites, we break out desert. My oldest daughter always has a birthday within seven days of Thanksgiving so she blows out candles, opens some presents, and the sugar rush begins. Key Lime was the cake this year, an unusual mix that proved a taste bud delight.

As usual, the meal was slap ya mama good and that’s exactly what I did. For those of you not familiar with that expression, it comes from the Bayou and means you lovingly slap ya mama on the back and kiss her cheek to thank her for a great meal.

Once lunch is over and the sugar rush is done, my father and I engage in a snoring contest while the Dallas Cowboys start up their annual Thanksgiving Day clash. The contest winner is the one that achieves a decibel level high enough to wake the opponent. Stand offs end when my youngest daughter slaps our feet and declares that our noise is making it difficult for her to concentrate on playing.

Black Friday comes the next morning and for most marks the day they help retailers stop losing money and begin the march toward profitability. We use that day to search for a Christmas tree in the North Carolina mountains.

We’ve been going to the mountaintops for a Frasier Fur for 23 years. Mincey Mountain was the destination for the first twenty, but the owner decided three years back to retire and close the business. I was disappointed that he took an early out at the tender young age of ninety-three, but you can’t begrudge a man enjoying the fruits of his labor.

After scalping a tree from a mountain our family ventures to the Dillard House for lunch. If you’ve never been there, it’s located in a town called Dillard. That’s Georgia’s last stop on Highway 441. The Dillard family founded and operates the place. Hence, the name Dillard House. It’s a southern culinary delight.

The Dillards decided years ago that meals should be served family style so instead of giving you a menu, they just start bringing plates of food when you sit down.

Once you receive the meal you and yours’ start rotating plates around the table like an assembly line that dumps parts off at each stop. There’s fried chicken, smoked chicken, country fried steak, barbeque pork, fried catfish, country ham, sweet potato soufflé, coleslaw, macaroni and cheese, green beans, baked corn, squash soufflé, cream corn, fried okra, calico salad, coleslaw, cabbage casserole, au gratin potatoes, yeast rolls, biscuits, cornbread, and a choice of pecan pie or blackberry cobbler for desert. You can top those last two off with ice cream if you want. They call that a la mode which is an imported term from France.

My food affinity got the better of me at both places. I feared that Peanut was going to take my side of the bet once I weighed in on Saturday so I fasted for six hours and ate leftovers Friday night.

The Dillard House meal ends the grazing period at my parents. Normally, I’ll have another round of gluttony at my in-laws. I had to skip that this season so I could take my girls to ballet practice for the Nutcracker (for those of you that don’t have your tickets, the Cartersville City Ballet will perform the Nutcracker December 4-5 at the Woodland Performing Arts Center. Good seats are available, but going fast).

Missing a meal at my in-laws lowered the over/under from four pounds to three.

Peanut had Thanksgiving barbeque at his in-laws on Thursday (they’re a rebel lot and always break with tradition), turkey his mama cooked on Friday, and another round of the same at his grandmother’s on Saturday.

We weighed in late Saturday afternoon. Dang if we both didn’t hit the over. That put Peanut’s up three bucks. He insisted I pay too.

I convinced him to bet double or nothing on who could lose the most weight by April 15. I'll let ya know how that turns out.

I can't say "Go Gators"

2009-11-25T13:20:00.000-05:00

I can’t say “Gators” behind the word “Go.”

This came up recently when a friend of mine sent me a note about Ware County football. They are called the Gators. She was telling me that they were playing Griffin in the playoffs. Some of the fellas on the team are the sons of guys I played football with years ago. I watched them almost pull out a state title two years against Northside Warner-Robins and was hoping they could rekindle that magic this season in spite of their mascot.

I’ve been a football fan as long as I remember. Most of you know that football in the south is a religion that falls just short of pagan worship, especially south of the gnat line. Down there, you join the congregation at the high school stadium on Friday night, gather around bar-be-que and big screen on Saturday to watch Georgia, and worship at church on Sunday. It’s an Autumn ritual. The rest of the year is spent analyzing last season and the one to come.

During my formidable years, I lived in Waycross where I was a die-hard Bulldog. The Bulldogs wore red and black and represented the city school system. Our arch-rivals were the Gators from the county. We usually squashed them like a bug. In fact it was twenty-six out of twenty-nine times that we squashed them like a bug. They say it was only 25 times because we forfeited that 1990 game along with about ten others and a trip to the state quarterfinals. Of course, everybody knew we would’ve beaten them even without those guys that didn’t pass their classes.
People say the city school system closed its doors and was absorbed by Ware County in 1994 because the city system ran out of money. Many Dog fans believe that was the culmination of a great football conspiracy that’s slightly less complicated than the one surrounding Area Fifty-One. Whichever, the Dog faithful logged four state titles and 330 victories in the history books before assuming a Gator identity.

Once merged, the schools had four state titles between them.

I probably shouldn’t reopen a fifteen year-old wound that’s mostly healed, but I can’t help myself. I’m infected with Gator grudge. It’s an incurable affliction that started with an egging incident during the 1977 season.

At the time Ware County was ranked number one in the state and we were ranked number two. Both teams were unbeaten. They had topped us 17-14 on their way to the region crown the season before. We won three games that season. That was the year that all Dog alums learned the meaning of the word anomaly.

The bicentennial year was the Gators’ first victory over Waycross. Ever. They were still feeling froggy a year later when we played them for the last game of the regular season.

I was in the sixth grade and my buddy Peanut Groves and I were clad in red and black and riding our bikes to school on the day of the big game when a VW bug with green and gold streamers came zipping toward us. The yahoo on the passenger side was sitting upright in the open window and making sounds like a crazed boar hog.

Once the car got near, the moron sitting in the window discharged a volley of eggs at Peanut and me while the driver lobbed a few toward us with his left hand. In all, they got off five rounds. That was pretty impressive since they were going at least fifty in a thirty mile an hour speed zone.
The first four tosses landed harmlessly on the ground, but the fifth smacked my bike and splattered my shirt. I wobbled, weaved and crashed into some nearby azalea bushes.

Peanut wheeled around in the middle of the road and used hand sign that he had seen a truck driver gesture to his dad. Peanut’s mama said he’d get whooped if used it. He wasn’t sure exactly what it meant, but figured the threat of a beating was an indicator of it being a pretty bad insult. That made it appropriate for the demented eggers. With that Peanut and I rode back to my house so I put on some non-egg soaked clothes.

Later that day we heard that a white VW had been in a wreck. Seems they couldn’t read those letters on the big red octagon sign. Word was the driver lost his front teeth and the passenger was concussed from busting the windshield with his head. Other than that, they were okay.

We beat Ware County 3-0 that night. A week later we whipped their Gator butts 28-7 for the region crown. Our perfect season concluded with
a thumping of Dalton in the state championship game.

We won another state title in 1981. I was a scrub team star and bench warmer on that group. We were better than the ’77 bunch in spite of losing once by a point to some Purple Hurricanes from Fitzgerald.

Earlier this year, Peanut and I were talking about the egging incident. He’s got kids in the Ware County school system and, like a good southern dad, takes them to the football games on Friday night. It’s a painful experience.

“I have to take Dramamine on game day because wanting a team wearing green and gold to win makes me dizzy,” Peanut said. “I said “Go Gators” at the state title game a few years ago and upchucked for a week. They would’ve won that game if they’d been wearing red and black.”
Peanut was on a roll and couldn’t stop. “I couldn’t take it if I didn’t wear Waycross Bulldog boxers to the game. You can’t buy those around here anymore. I stocked up in ’92, but my last pair wore out a year ago. My mama knew how I felt about it and she salvaged enough cloth to sew three pair together.”

I understood. I pull for the Ware County boys when they play, check their scores each Saturday morning and make sure to watch them if they are on TV. I was a little bummed when they lost to Griffin.

I still just can’t say “Gators” after the word “Go.”

Watch your step

2009-11-16T16:09:00.000-05:00

People fall too often. It’s not an epidemic, but if you slip and find yourself on your rump you’ll realize that it has happened one time too many.

I’ve fallen a whole bunch and watched other people fall too. In fact, I consider myself an expert on the subject.

My first big fall occurred when I was three. My sister cut a corner too sharply and dumped me out of my Radio Flyer wagon breaking my collarbone. Since then I have fallen from cliffs, boats, a moving truck, a jet ski, and numerous trees. I have also involuntarily been down a waterfall, into a pit, over fences, down stadium bleachers, outta bed, and bumped down all thirteen steps in my house.

My missteps have resulted in multitudes of bruises, a snapped collarbone, fractured arm, broken leg, cracked toe, and tendon replacement in one hand

These are my qualifications to speak on this subject. Over the years I have found that the best thing you can do to avoid such spills is to pay attention.

I’ll give you an example.

If you have read this column more than twice, then you probably know of George and Oscar the alligators. Oscar was the King of the Okefenokee Swamp Park gators and George was the Scalawag from Skull Lake who constantly tried to snake Oscar’s girlfriends. I worked at the swamp park during the summer when I was in college and watched their follies.

I opened the park one day arriving earlier than everyone but George. He was taking in the morning sun on the bank leading into the building where the bears, snakes, and bobcat were housed. Knowing the manager would have a duck fit if he saw George laying in front of that building, I grabbed a sixteen foot pole and started walking over to prod the rogue gator into the water.

I was about twenty yards from George when Oscar charged from beneath the bridge and sank his teeth into the Scalawag from Skull Lake’s tail. George whipped around and they commenced to fighting. They pushed, pulled, bit, ripped, clawed, and gnashed until they were both scarred and bloody. I stood there like a dipstick watching them tear each other up.

As a side note, if you are innocently standing at or near the location of a fight, you will soon be participating in the melee. That rule is almost full proof and applies to watching mamas and teenagers exchange barbs as well. That’s another column for another day.

George finally broke free and charged away in search of an escape. I saw Oscar behind him. That meant George was loosing their fight. At the same time it dawned on me that I was in the way of wherever they intended on going. I assumed that neither was interested in chewing on me. However, not wanting to confirm that I turned and sprinted away so that munching on Mikey was no longer an option.

Oscar wore out pretty quickly, stopped running and laid on his belly. George did the same. I kept going.

Reaching the entrance to the boat dock, I turned around just in time to see Oscar leap forward. George hopped up, dodged the bigger gator and made tracks. Oscar stayed close behind. I ran up the bridge to the boat dock.

The process of both gators stopping to rest, Oscar leaping at George and George fleeing in fear continued past the azalea bushes, under the big oak tree and beyond the food stand.

George’s eyes lit up after he passed the last picnic table and got a glimpse of the main waterway. That was his ticket to safety.
Oscar stopped just after the tables and in front of the sidewalk to rest. George kept going full bore, bolting onto the deck and pointing his nose toward the water. He was moving pretty fast when he saw the six-foot drop and the metal boat at the end of it.

George tried stopping, but his momentum was stronger than his brakes and once his front legs were over the side of the dock he hit a tipping point and accelerated toward the scene of the crash.

I expected a slither forward and a quick thud. Instead, George smashed onto the front seat of the boat nose first. For a brief moment he balanced on his snout nearly perpendicular to the world.

That didn’t last long. As soon as his weight decided which direction to go his body twisted slightly, crashed across three rows of seats and bounced twice before coming to a rest.

Oscar laid still. I applauded. It was the best fall I had ever seen. I thought George was dead and I’m guessing he did too, but after a few minutes he started breathing again.

About that time my buddy, Peanut Groves, showed up and I explained excitedly what had happened. When he finished laughing, we took our poles, circled behind Oscar and carefully prodded the gator until he eased into a nearby pond.

Then we walked over to the boat where George lay bleeding. Being a safe distance above ole scalawag we gigged him a little hoping that he would figure out an exit strategy. After a few minutes of aggravation, hissing and snapping, George finally scrapped his stomach over the side of the boat and splashed into the water.

As George slowly swam away, Peanut looked over at me and then gazed back at the gator.

“You know, sometimes you’ve got to slow down a little and pay attention to what you are doing,” Peanut said. “If you don’t do that, you end up falling a lot. You need to tell George that.”

George and I never did get on friendly enough terms to have that conversation so he didn’t learn that best ways to avoid falling are not being chased by alligators and paying attention to what you are doing and where you are going.

Say Your Prayers

2009-11-10T19:19:00.000-05:00

My wife told me to fix the typo in last week’s column so that’s my lead for this week. If you’ll recall in the third paragraph of last week’s musings I wrote the following:

‘As you read this remember that the women mentioned here, especially my wife, are pregnant now and hopefully will not be again.”

Seems I left out the word “not” after “are.” That’s a sentence changer right there. So let me state emphatically for the record: NEITHER MY WIFE NOR OUR FRIEND, MOLLY, ARE PREGNANT AND DO NOT INTEND TO BE HEAVY WITH CHILD AGAIN. PLEASE STOP RUBBING THEIR BELLIES!

Hope that takes care of that.

I think it was seven or eight years ago that my buddy Sam and I were talking about a guy he played racquetball with. We’ll call the fella “John” because his mama gave him that name. John’s a mechanic in Atlanta and a single dad with two daughters. I had watched him play racquetball enough to know that my playing him would invite a severe beating.

John is from the Bronx in New York. He's a Damn Yankee, one that came to God’s country and stayed. Ole boy is a good Damn Yankee though, the kind that you want to call your town his home. He’s always got a smile and good word.

Sam was telling me that John’s oldest daughter, Kayla, had just received her second heart transplant and the doctors said some complications put her survival in question. She was about seven or eight at the time. If that doesn’t put a rock in the pit of your stomach, then you aren’t breathing.

That night I told my two girls about Kayla. They put her on the prayer list.

Once you get on my girls’ prayer list, you don’t come off. They have a really good track record and make me give them regular reports about the people on the list. I told Sam that my girls were on the job and Kayla was going to be fine. He relayed the message to John. Five or so years later, I told him to update John that Kayla was still on the prayer list.

It was about that time my oldest daughter, Ellie, accompanied me to Washington DC. The chamber of commerce takes a trip up there each year to remind your Senators and Congressmen who they represent and the needs of the business community in Cartersville and Bartow County. Being mayor at the time, I made the trip and decided to take Ellie who was about nine at the time. In case you’re wondering, the city paid my way and I paid for all of my daughter’s expenses.

Ellie and I had a blast. When she wasn’t charming Congressmen and Senators, we were touring museums, monuments, the Capitol, and the White House. That trip and the one the following year with my daughter, Maggie, were two of the best trips I have ever taken. Each night Ellie would do a little of her make-up work for school, but when it was time to go home she still had a lot left to do. She worked two hours on her schoolwork at the airport and another hour on the plane. When she was done, she put up her folder with the homework in it and took quick nap.

We landed, got our luggage and started zipping back up the road toward Cartersville. We had been on the highway about five minutes when a piercing shriek came from the backseat of my truck. I was talking to Sam on the cellphone and the sound temporarily deafened him. The windows on my truck shuddered and the bulbs on a nearby billboard exploded. A wail and tears puddling in Ellie’s lap closely followed the shriek. Then there was the incomprehensible babble. I was able to pick out the words “left” and “folder” and knew we had a problem.

I briefly explained the situation to Sam, hung up, pulled off the nearest exit and helped my daughter look for the folder containing hours of work. When we didn’t find it, I called the airline which proved fruitless. I calmed Ellie by explaining that I would talk to her teacher and help her do the work. Again.

This did little to comfort either of us.

As we got close to home Sam called back.

“Tell Ellie that her folder will be in my mailbox tomorrow morning,” he said. “You can pick it up on the way to school.”

He explained to me how he would get the folder. I hung up the phone and told Ellie the good news. She asked if Sam had called her new friend Johnny (as in Isakson) to get the folder, an idea that might have worked if I had thought of it.

I told her no, that as it turned out the father of the girl she had prayed for over the past five years fixed airplanes for a living. John had called the folks that cleaned the plane that we had flown. They found the folder and were to leave it in his locker so that he could bring it back to Cartersville after working the night shift.

Ellie sighed as if the weight of the sky had been lifted from her shoulders, sat back, looked out the window and said, “So, we prayed for her to get better and her daddy’s helping me when I need help? Wow.”

The next morning, the folder was in Sam’s mailbox. Ellie made “A”s on all of her work.

Kayla greets each day with a smile. So does John.

Say your prayers.

The Belly Rub

2009-11-06T13:21:00.000-05:00

It’s November.

My oldest child, Ellie, turns thirteen this month. That’s weird. She was born yesterday, or so it seems.

Feeling nostalgic I pulled a few columns I wrote about the time Ellie was born. This is my favorite. As you read this remember that the women mentioned here, especially my wife, are not pregnant now and (hopefully) will not be again. Here’s how it goes:

Since my wife, Susan entered the seventh month of pregnancy; I have noticed that the number of people pointing to her stomach has increased from me to about 2,634.

As far as I am concerned, this confirms that there is a universal infatuation with a pregnant woman’s belly. Confirmation of this fact is of great comfort to me since I have long wanted to reach out and touch a pregnant tummy, but have never mustarded the gumption to do so.
Other people don’t have that problem. In fact, for some, rubbing a pregnant belly is a salutation. They will greet me, shake my hand, reach over and rub Susan’s belly. These are the people we know. Complete strangers will ignore me totally and put their palm over Susan’s belly before asking, “When are you due, honey?”

Women practice about ninety-five percent of these greetings. As best I can figure, such a reception symbolizes a ritualistic laying on of the hands associated with the initiation into the sorority of mommies. When this happens, I always notice that the woman leans forward in a bowing motion while rubbing. My best guess is that this is a secret sign of respect that probably proceeds a brief prayer for both the mommy and child. I hope that this prayer includes asking God to reduce the hormonal upheaval this unborn is causing its mother.

Men react differently when it comes to rubbing pregnant bellies. They are hesitant to touch the protruding midriff, no matter how far it sticks out and how badly not rubbing it makes their palms sweat. Instead, men will stare at the belly, wring their hands, bite their lip and shift their weight back and forth from foot to foot, but rarely touch.

Grandfathers with ample gray hair and wrinkles will occasionally rub the belly briefly, figuring their age affords such privilege. However, younger men don’t test these water and with good reason. Men understand that their gender has a high testosterone level and fierce possessiveness of their women. This fact is evidence by the popular, “Hands off, this woman is taken” inscription found in many wedding bands worn by mothers to be. The fact is, rubbing a pregnant belly, and its direct result has rendered man a man under the age of 70 unconscious.

The lack of pregnant belly rubbing is a frustrating point for men and perhaps serves as an indication of why many men grow their own bellies to rub. In fact, I believe that a diligent study would reveal that the increase in the number of potbellied men mirrors the population growth rate.

Unfortunately, none of this adequately explains why people want to rub a pregnant belly so badly. In pondering this question, I reflected back to my original encounter with a pregnant belly for the answer.
As I mentioned earlier, I have never had the gumption to rub a pregnant belly. Knowing this, an attractive blonde named Molly, grabbed my hand one day while she was over at our house and slapped it on her pregnant midsection.

“You feel it kick,” she asked.

Molly is a good friend who is prone to doing and saying spontaneous and occasionally outrageous things. In fact, I could see her taking the hand of someone she barely knew, thrusting it on her stomach and proudly asking if they felt her baby kick. Her husband, Wayne, is also a good friend, but standing there with my hand on his wife’s belly, I wasn’t too sure of the depth of our friendship. I nervously waited on their baby to kick me and hoped its father didn’t follow suit.

When I felt the baby kick, I forgot about where my hand was and yelled, “Wayne, he’s kicking.”

Wayne ran across the room, stuck his hand next to mine and felt the jar from his child’s foot. He smiled at me and I smiled at him. It was the first time I’ve ever had a male bonding experience without playing ball or killing something.

Therein lies your answer. There is something alive and magical in these pregnant, protruding bellies and this natural phenomenon of life peeks the interest of all people in one-way share or form. So, it is perfectly normal to want to rub the belly just make sure you follow the proper protocol.

One Bull Only Needs One Cow

2009-10-24T12:32:00.001-04:00

Oscar cheated on Susie. Both of them.

He had character flaws, God bless him.

For those of you that have not read my past missives on the Okefenokee Swamp Park, Oscar was the biggest alligator in the Okefenokee’s northern most tourist attraction. That made him the king.

Kings get harems, or so Oscar assumed. Folks said he had always been true to One-Eyed Susie until Blind Susie had shown up. There were questions as to why he didn’t eat little Fred as well. People assumed Freddie was a bull, which is what male gators are called by academicians, but rumors abounded that he was really a cow misnamed at birth. Cows are female gators.

I never heard of anyone who sucessfully lifted Fred’s tail and found out. I tried on a bridge one day, but that didn’t go so well. People will tell you there are lots of ways to figure out the sex of a gator, but in the end the only certain method is old fashion genital identification. That made Freddie an unknown.

What we knew was that Oscar fathered baby gators for several years in a row with both One-eyed Susie and Blind Susie. He’d start bellowing in the Spring and disappear in the shallow water with one or the other. A few minutes later one of the Susies would emerge with a smirk and Oscar would drag himself onto bank, collapse, and wait for someone to throw him a lit cigarette.

A few months after that both Susies would build pine straw nests on opposite ends of the park and kill anything that came near until little gators started swimming around. It happened like that for years.

Then came the Spring of George.

George lived alone in Skull lake, about half a mile by water from the park. Rumor was there was a female gator that he kept company with out there, but the only one any of us ever saw stayed near Green River, a good haul from Skull Lake and pretty close to where Martha ruled (another misnaming at birth).

George made a habit of slipping into the park to hope some tourists would throw him a few scraps. He was an unpredictable, surly barbarian, who totally disregarded proper alligator etiquette. When no one was looking we boat guides bludgeoned him with poles or call in Oscar to assert his alpha male status. Oscar would confront George, beat him like his mama should have and escort him back toward Skull Lake. It was great.

One warm late Spring day when I arrived at work, I saw two gators together in the shallow water. After they emerged Blind Susie swam dizzily into a tree with a smirk on her snout. George laid on the bank waiting on a lit cigarette. I was stunned. Peanut Groves said he had seen the same scene a week earlier. Pop Bannister claimed it had become a regular routine.

Larry Parker said he had witnessed George and One Eyed Susie together near the repair shop in the back of the park a week before. I couldn’t believe it. One-eyed Susie had whipped George on numerous occasions when he made advances and seemed to genuinely hate him as much as the rest of us. I figured George had slipped up on One-eye’s blind side and she mistook him for Oscar… more than once.

The women working in the gift shop dispelled that thought saying that the Susies must have found out that Oscar hadn’t been true to either one of them and were taking up with George in retaliation. We all agreed that they couldn’t possibly see anything in George. He was a scalawag.

Alligators have a brain the size of a golf ball and supposedly have no capacity to feel emotion, but Oscar seemed to know that he hadn’t sired the products of that Summer’s nests. After that, he spent most of his time lethargically moving around his little island next to the boat dock. He slumbered over when we called him to eat and showed no interest at all when we threw snakes near him. Before the George incident, he would swim over, bite a slithering reptile by the tail whipping it from side to side until the snake’s head snapped off. Then he’d eat it. It was more violent than a Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie.

One-eyed Susie would come over, but Oscar always swam away. I didn’t have a whole lotta love for either George or Oscar on account of each one having tried to eat me, but seeing Oscar depressed made my heart go out to him. He brought it on himself, but I sure hoped he and One-Eyed could right their wrongs.

George showed up more frequently that Summer and charged a few boatguides when we hit him with a push pole. The Summer ended and I went back to college and heard later that the folks from the Department of Natural Resources had hauled George off.

I didn’t work at the Swamp Park after that Summer, but went back several years later with my buddy, Peanut Groves. Blind Susie hadn’t laid a nest for two years and then died at what seemed a young age. Fred had grown a little and Oscar chased him out to Skull Lake where he had taken up with a little thing they were calling Two-eyed Susie. That was taken as confirmation that he was a bull.

One-eyed had laid a nest the year before and was working on another. From where Peanut and I sat on the steps of the boat dock, we could see her and Oscar lying side by side on his little island.

“Oscar seems happier these days,” Peanut said as he ate some crackers and cheez whiz. I agreed. “Susie too.”

Then Peanut gazed far away at nothing in particular the way great thinkers always do before stating the profound.

“You know, I’m thinking this relationship thing works best when it’s just one bull and one cow. Anything more than that gets downright messy and confusing.”

He paused and looked at me. I nodded my head, sipped on a Coke and we turned our heads and started both stared at nothing in particular. Some statements require no response.

So what is an annuity?

2009-10-24T12:27:00.002-04:00

An annuity is a contract between you, the purchaser or owner, and an insurance company, the annuity issuer. In its simplest form, you pay money to an annuity issuer, and the issuer pays out the principal and earnings back to you or to a named beneficiary. Life insurance companies first developed annuities to provide income to individuals during their retirement years.

One of the attractive aspects of an annuity is that its earnings are tax deferred until you begin to receive payments back from the annuity issuer. In this respect, an annuity is similar to a qualified retirement plan. Over a long period of time, your investment in an annuity can grow substantially larger than if you had invested money in a comparable taxable investment. Like a qualified retirement plan, a 10 percent tax penalty may be imposed if you begin withdrawals from an annuity before age 59½. Unlike a qualified retirement plan, contributions to an annuity are not tax deductible, and taxes are paid only on the earnings when distributed.

There are four parties to an annuity contract

There are four parties to an annuity contract: the annuity issuer, the owner, the annuitant, and the beneficiary. The annuity issuer is the company (e.g., an insurance company) that issues the annuity. The owner is the individual or other entity who buys the annuity from the annuity issuer and makes the contributions to the annuity. The annuitant is the individual whose life will be used as the measuring life for determining the timing and amount of distribution benefits that will be paid out. The owner and the annuitant are usually the same person but do not have to be. Finally, the beneficiary is the person who receives a death benefit from the annuity at the death of the annuitant.

Two distinct phases of an annuity

There are two distinct phases to an annuity: (1) the accumulation (or investment) phase and (2) the distribution phase.

The accumulation (or investment) phase is the time period when you add money to the annuity. When using this option, you'll have purchased a deferred annuity. You can purchase the annuity in one lump sum (known as a single premium annuity), or you make investments periodically, over time.

The distribution phase is when you begin receiving distributions from the annuity. You have two general options for receiving distributions from your annuity. Under the first option, you can withdraw some or all of the money in the annuity in lump sums.

The second option (commonly referred to as the guaranteed income or annuitization option) provides you with a guaranteed income stream from the annuity for your entire lifetime (no matter how long you live) or for a specific period of time (e.g., 10 years). (Guarantees are based on the claims-paying ability of the issuing insurance company.) This option can be elected at any time on your deferred annuity. Or, if you want to invest in an annuity and start receiving payments within the first year, you'll purchase what is known as an immediate annuity.

You can also elect to receive the annuity payments over both your lifetime and the lifetime of another person. This option is known as a joint and survivor annuity. Under a joint and survivor annuity, the annuity issuer promises to pay you an amount of money on a periodic basis (e.g., monthly, quarterly, or yearly). The amount you receive for each payment period will depend on how much money you have in the annuity, how earnings are credited to your account (whether fixed or variable), and the age at which you begin the annuitization phase. The length of the distribution period will also affect how much you receive. If you are age 65 and elect to receive annuity distributions over your entire lifetime, the amount you will receive with each payment will be less than if you had elected to receive annuity distributions over five years.

When is an annuity appropriate?

It is important to understand that annuities can be an excellent tool if you use them properly. Annuities are not right for everyone.

Annuity contributions are not tax deductible. That's why most experts advise funding other retirement plans first. However, if you have already contributed the maximum allowable amount to other available retirement plans, an annuity can be an excellent choice. There is no limit to how much you can invest in an annuity, and like other retirement plans, the funds are allowed to grow tax deferred until you begin taking distributions.

Annuities are designed to be very-long-term investment vehicles. In most cases, you'll pay a penalty for early withdrawals. And if you take a lump-sum distribution of your annuity funds within the first few years after purchasing your annuity, you may be subject to surrender charges imposed by the issuer. As long as you're sure you won't need the money until at least age 59½, an annuity is worth considering. If your needs are more short term, you should explore other options.

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This information, developed by an independent third party, has been obtained from sources considered to be reliable, but Raymond James Financial Services, Inc. does not guarantee that the foregoing material is accurate or complete. This information is not a complete summary or statement of all available data necessary for making an investment decision and does not constitute a recommendation. The information contained in this report does not purport to be a complete description of the securities, markets, or developments referred to in this material. This information is not intended as a solicitation or an offer to buy or sell any security referred to herein. Investments mentioned may not be suitable for all investors. The material is general in nature. Past performance may not be indicative of future results. Raymond James Financial Services, Inc. does not provide advice on tax, legal or mortgage issues. These matters should be discussed with the appropriate professional.

Securities offered through Raymond James Financial Services, Inc., member FINRA/SIPC, an independent broker/dealer, and are not insured by FDIC, NCUA or any other government agency, are not deposits or obligations of the financial institution, are not guaranteed by the financial institution, and are subject to risks, including the possible loss of principal.

Prepared by Forefield Inc. Copyright 2009 Forefield Inc.

Bumpology 101

2009-10-04T08:07:00.003-04:00

Bumpology: noun. The study of life’s Bumps; also know as Bump Management.

Bumpology is a tough course. However, you won’t find it at The Harvard Business School or any other place where ivy grows around the university’s name. In fact, you won’t find it in the class offerings at any college.

The only way to learn Bump Management is by living. Call it the School of Common Sense where the Bumps will teach you that Life can act like some of its four letter brethren.

Bumps are strange occurrences that throw people for a loop either spinning them downward or catapulting them upward. Live long enough and you’ll get some of both. Good bumps are those that elevate your status and confidence like bloodying the bully’s nose in the third grade and then forcing him bring everybody in the class Bubble Yum. Good bumps put people in a comfort zone where they understand what’s going on and feel in control of their destiny.

Good bumps can elevate people to the place where they are doing better than they or anyone else thought they would. When people find themselves in this position, they take it for granted so they can fit in with the vast majority of the world.

Bad bumps come along too and typically follow the good, jolting their target like a lightening bolt, slamming people down on their backside so that they are looking up at gray rain clouds and wondering if that sunny light in the sky will ever reappear. The bad bumps seem to stick out more than the good ones mainly due to the pain they inflict.

I first noticed a bad bump when my buddy Peanut Groves face started producing oil faster than a Texas oilrig and zits popped up on his face like Kudzu covering a country hillside. He was a good looking fella until then, but once the lubrication disaster started Betsy Greene nicknamed him Grease Monkey. That was something he appreciated slightly less than chiggers in his gym shorts (a different story for another day).

He was smitten with Betsy the beauty queen and she broke his heart. He lost complete self-confidence until his face cleared; he grew six inches and again became the object of many female crushes. Meanwhile, Betsy, the Junior High Homecoming Queen, ate so many Bon-Bons that her rear end grew to the size of Rhode Island and she picked up the unofficial crown of Miss Thunder Thighs. To her credit, she later discovered Jane Fonda’s workout tapes, shaped up her legs and backside and married some ole boy with more money than most third world countries.

The people that know the most about bumps are Bumpologist. They gather their knowledge not thru study, but by experience. Bumpologist are chosen by the Bumps to go through an extraordinary number of challenges. They definitely don’t volunteer for the job. Bumpologists come to understand how good the positive happenings make people feel, how awful the bad ones can be, what must be done to fight thru the misery, and how to help others deal with the Bumps that hit them.

Most people can handle the comfort good Bumps bring, but being a Bumpologist requires surviving the Bumps that leave your psyche bloodied and bruised. Bad Bumps include things like being robbed by a business partner, losing your house and forced to the brink of bankruptcy, being in a marriage that didn’t work, experiencing the death or disability of a loved one, losing a job, battling accidents and poor health, dealing with the heartache that can come with raising kids, well you get the picture.

Bumpologists persevere, they endure, look for the good in every situation and drink the water instead of worrying about the level to which the glass is filled. They are folks that understand what being unarmed and retrieving their dog from the jaws an alligator takes. They have been there and done that.

Last Monday a friend told me the creek was rising near the home of my favorite Bumpologist. Word was several neighbors were stacking sandbags in front of his house to keep the water out. When I got there, I discovered that the sand bags hadn’t worked and his living room was knee deep in creek water. I put on my waders and went to help.

My friend, the Bumpologist, is a collector of all things old and rare as well as a researcher extraordinaire. Uncommon books, antique furniture, centuries old family heirlooms, pictures, and documents with over twenty years of researched information piled into them were among the irreplaceable treasures in the home. If someone had added up the age of everything in that house, it would produce enough years to reach back to the Jurassic period.

I grabbed all the pictures I could find and lugged them upstairs past where I thought the water would reach. Then I watched as he, his wife, and their daughter struggled to decide which of their valued possessions meant more than the others. When they stalled trying to decide, those of us helping made the decision for them.

After about three hours the water reached my ribs and the firefighters were calling for us to evacuate. We filled a canoe with some basic living items, heeded the rescuers’ call, and trudged thru the water’s increasingly rapid current toward land.

My friend, the Bumpologist beat me to the dry ground and sat on the edge of his canoe that was parked on a hill. I slogged out of the overflowing stream and squeezed his shoulder in a gesture of encouragement and sympathy. He sighed, glanced up at me, and then looked back at his home of 23 years watching the three and a half foot river running thru it.

“Damn it, Mike,” he finally exclaimed turning to look at me. “You were the last one out of the house, and you didn’t even shut the door.”

Then he smiled.

Resiliency. It’s the primary trait of a Bumpologists.

Bonds, Interest Rates, and the Impact of Inflation

2009-09-17T12:02:00.002-04:00

There are two fundamental ways that you can profit from owning bonds: from the interest that bonds pay, or from any increase in the bond's price. Many people who invest in bonds because they want a steady stream of income are surprised to learn that bond prices can fluctuate, just as they do with any security traded in the secondary market. If you sell a bond before its maturity date, you may get more than its face value; you could also receive less if you must sell when bond prices are down. The closer the bond is to its maturity date, the closer to its face value the price is likely to be.

Though the ups and downs of the bond market are not usually as dramatic as the movements of the stock market, they can still have a significant impact on your overall return. If you're considering investing in bonds, either directly or through a mutual fund or exchange-traded fund, it's important to understand how bonds behave and what can affect your investment in them.

The price-yield seesaw and interest rates

Just as a bond's price can fluctuate, so can its yield--its overall percentage rate of return on your investment at any given time. A typical bond's coupon rate--the annual interest rate it pays--is fixed. However, the yield isn't, because the yield percentage depends not only on a bond's coupon rate but also on changes in its price.

Both bond prices and yields go up and down, but there's an important rule to remember about the relationship between the two: They move in opposite directions, much like a seesaw. When a bond's price goes up, its yield goes down, even though the coupon rate hasn't changed. The opposite is true as well: When a bond's price drops, its yield goes up.

That's true not only for individual bonds but also the bond market as a whole. When bond prices rise, yields in general fall, and vice versa.

What moves the seesaw?

In some cases, a bond's price is affected by something that is unique to its issuer--for example, a change in the bond's rating. However, other factors have an impact on all bonds. The twin factors that affect a bond's price are inflation and changing interest rates. A rise in either interest rates or the inflation rate will tend to cause bond prices to drop. Inflation and interest rates behave similarly to bond yields, moving in the opposite direction from bond prices.

If inflation means higher prices, why do bond prices drop?

The answer has to do with the relative value of the interest that a specific bond pays. Rising prices over time reduce the purchasing power of each interest payment a bond makes. Let's say a five-year bond pays $400 every six months. Inflation means that $400 will buy less five years from now. When investors worry that a bond's yield won't keep up with the rising costs of inflation, the price of the bond drops because there is less investor demand for it.

Why watch the Fed?

Inflation also affects interest rates. If you've heard a news commentator talk about the Federal Reserve Board raising or lowering interest rates, you may not have paid much attention unless you were about to buy a house or take out a loan. However, the Fed's decisions on interest rates can also have an impact on the market value of your bonds.

The Fed takes an active role in trying to prevent inflation from spiraling out of control. When the Fed gets concerned that the rate of inflation is rising, it may decide to raise interest rates. Why? To try to slow the economy by making it more expensive to borrow money. For example, when interest rates on mortgages go up, fewer people can afford to buy homes. That tends to dampen the housing market, which in turn can affect the economy.

When the Fed raises its target interest rate, other interest rates and bond yields typically rise as well. That's because bond issuers must pay a competitive interest rate to get people to buy their bonds. New bonds paying higher interest rates mean existing bonds with lower rates are less valuable. Prices of existing bonds fall.

That's why bond prices can drop even though the economy may be growing. An overheated economy can lead to inflation, and investors begin to worry that the Fed may have to raise interest rates, which would hurt bond prices even though yields are higher.

Falling interest rates: good news, bad news

Just the opposite happens when interest rates are falling. When rates are dropping, bonds issued today will typically pay a lower interest rate than similar bonds issued when rates were higher. Those older bonds with higher yields become more valuable to investors, who are willing to pay a higher price to get that greater income stream. As a result, prices for existing bonds with higher interest rates tend to rise.

Example: Jane buys a newly issued 10-year corporate bond that has a 4% coupon rate--that is, its annual payments equal 4% of the bond's principal. Three years later, she wants to sell the bond. However, interest rates have risen; corporate bonds being issued now are paying interest rates of 6%. As a result, investors won't pay Jane as much for her bond, since they could buy a newer bond that would pay them more interest. If interest rates later begin to fall, the value of Jane's bond would rise again--especially if interest rates fall below 4%.

When interest rates begin to drop, it's often because the Fed believes the economy has begun to slow. That may or may not be good for bonds. The good news: Bond prices may go up. However, a slowing economy also increases the chance that some borrowers may default on their bonds. Also, when interest rates fall, some bond issuers may redeem existing debt and issue new bonds at a lower interest rate, just as you might refinance a mortgage. If you plan to reinvest any of your bond income, it may be a challenge to generate the same amount of income without adjusting your investment strategy.

All bond investments are not alike

Inflation and interest rate changes don't affect all bonds equally. Under normal conditions, short-term interest rates may feel the effects of any Fed action almost immediately, but longer-term bonds likely will see the greatest price changes.

Also, a bond mutual fund may be affected somewhat differently than an individual bond. For example, a bond fund's manager may be able to alter the fund's holdings to minimize the impact of rate changes. Your financial professional may do something similar if you hold individual bonds.

Focus on your goals, not on interest rates alone

Though it's useful to understand generally how bond prices are influenced by interest rates and inflation, it probably doesn't make sense to obsess over what the Fed's next decision will be. Interest rate cycles tend to occur over months and even years. Also, the relationship between interest rates, inflation, and bond prices is complex, and can be affected by factors other than the ones outlined here.

Your bond investments need to be tailored to your individual financial goals, and take into account your other investments. A financial professional can help you design your portfolio to accommodate changing economic circumstances.

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This information, developed by an independent third party, has been obtained from sources considered to be reliable, but Raymond James Financial Services, Inc. does not guarantee that the foregoing material is accurate or complete. This information is not a complete summary or statement of all available data necessary for making an investment decision and does not constitute a recommendation. The information contained in this report does not purport to be a complete description of the securities, markets, or developments referred to in this material. This information is not intended as a solicitation or an offer to buy or sell any security referred to herein. Investments mentioned may not be suitable for all investors. The material is general in nature. Past performance may not be indicative of future results. Raymond James Financial Services, Inc. does not provide advice on tax, legal or mortgage issues. These matters should be discussed with the appropriate professional.

Securities offered through Raymond James Financial Services, Inc., member FINRA/SIPC, an independent broker/dealer, and are not insured by FDIC, NCUA or any other government agency, are not deposits or obligations of the financial institution, are not guaranteed by the financial institution, and are subject to risks, including the possible loss of principal.

Prepared by Forefield Inc. Copyright 2009 Forefield Inc.

Ballet and the Rudeawakening

2009-09-13T20:41:00.003-04:00

Rudeawakening.

It’s a verb, definitely an actionable item. I know it’s supposed to be two words, but the folks at Webster will come around to my way of thinking. I’ll define it for ya.

Rudeawakenings are reactionary events. They occur when you are jolted from a deep sleep by a little girl performing an atomic knee drop on your belly.

This sensation will cause your head to violently jerk skyward while the Incredible Hulk seemingly yanks your feet toward Heaven. You find refilling your lungs with the oxygen bludgeoned from them as simple as sucking air thru a concrete block.

As your eyes burst from their sockets, the only thing you will see is the grinning culprit sitting squarely on your stomach. She’ll be asking the most pertinent question that comes to her three year-old brain.

“Did that hurt, daddy?”

Throwing a child across a room is frowned upon by most judges and met, rightfully so, with the maximum sentencing. Such events would no doubt land you in a jail cell next to a large man named Bubba who likes the way your prison cloths fit. Besides, who doesn’t enjoy occasionally waking to a seemingly near death experience?

For the record, if you have more than 116 Rudeawakenings in one year you should take the perpetrating child for psychological evaluations. My experience is that the psychologist will tell you that Rudeawakenings below that figure are simply part of a painful childhood phase.

He or she will add that you should take solace in the fact that the knees are not striking points further south on your anatomy. The latter notion is valid as such calamities are within the margin of error for a three-year old.

This all starts innocently enough with Dance Prep Training. DPT, as I call it, begins when the first daughter starts taking ballet (at the Cartersville School of Ballet), comes home and shows her mama and daddy what she has learned. The younger child will begin to instinctively imitate the older child. With the older child instructing, rehearsals are most intense on Saturday and Sunday afternoons when the daddy is watching football thru his eyelids.

It goes like this: Plie, Passe, Port de bras, Pose, Jete, Grand Plie, Grand-Jete, leap forward, tuck both feet under the buttocks, atomic knee to daddy’s belly. Rudeawakening.

It happened to me while I was awake and not looking too. Sometimes, the dance sequence was executed even when I was watching. So, you can understand my hesitation when it came time to pay for this child to learn more complex torture methods disguised as ballet. Fortunately, either the ire that follows a rudeawakening or sheer sympathy for an agonized victim decreased the atomic knee drops to zero.

Now she and her older sister float across the stage, leap into the air and perform steps that seem far beyond the capabilities of ten and twelve year-olds. Not just in ballet either. They perform Michael Jackson’s Thriller, Stomp, Hip-Hop, Jazz, and, my favorite, tap that would make Rita Hayward, Gregory Hines, and Bojangles Robinson proud. Practices are daily at the dance studio and continue in the kitchen when the girls get home.

It’s not just my kids either. There’s a whole slew of girls and guys at the Cartersville School of Dance that are knock your socks off good dancers. If you haven’t seen them, then you are missing something.

My wife and I decided fifteen years ago, before my girls were born, that I needed some culture in my life and started going to the dance performances. Nutcracker, Kaleidoscope, and the spring recital only happen a few times each year so you have to catch them when you can. I gave up football, baseball, and outdoor stuff for a few hours on those days, a huge sacrifice for a Southern male. Now I use the DVR to record the game while I watch the dance.

So, here’s what you need to do: dig into the top of your pocket, not deep, and spend a few hours on October 3, attending The Cartersville Ballet Company’s production of “A Dance Kaleidoscope.” Showtimes are two and seven-thirty. Tickets are only $10. It’s a great value. You won’t regret it. Nutcraker happens just before Christmas.

For those of you that don’t get the Kaleidoscope part, it means you get to see a wide variety of dances in one show. You’ll like it.

If you missed the Rudeawakenings, count yourself among the lucky. Now you can enjoy the fruits of the pain and suffering other’s of us endured. I’ll see ya there.

Universal Healthcare? Be careful what you wish for

2009-08-28T09:58:00.006-04:00

‘Be careful what you ask for, you just might get it.”

Big Buck Jones used to say that to a few of my buddies and me when we wished for everything from a lot of money to bikini clad models. Buck would say that and then show us the twenty-one stitches he had received on his arm and eighteen more on his chest from the wish he was granted.

"This ole bear was getting into my hogs. I called him Cronos, after that Greek Titan god that ate all his children,” Buck would say to start his tale. “Anyway, Cronos got in my hog pen, killed my fattest hog and drug him into the swamp. I heard it, but they were gone before I could get outta the house.”

Then Buck would pause and shake his head, “I wished I could be there when that old bear came up, so I got my dog, Zeke, and we waited up on him every night for a week. Zeke wanted a piece of that bear too.”

There was never a dog better than Zeke. “He’s a Heinz 57 mutt,” Buck would say when people asked what kind of dog Zeke was. Buck called him that because that’s how many different flavors of dog he had in him. He was special.

One of Zeke’s back legs was missing as was his right eye, the result of chasing and catching moving stuff. That list ranged from chipmunks to school buses and most things in between. He was old, but had more energy than a puppy. If Buck had told Zeke to “git” an oak tree, he’d gnaw that sucker down. If a stranger came in the yard or near the kids, he would leave running without the seat of his britches.

Hunting was Zeke’s favorite thing and he hunted it all - quail, squirrels, raccoons, deer, rabbits, and ducks. He even went fishing. Buck claimed the dog was a bass pointer and would sniff the water before standing with one front leg cocked in the direction of the largest bass around.

If there were a hall of fame for dogs, Zeke would be in it.

It was a Tuesday night when Buck heard a commotion in the hog pen, yelled, ran to the fallen gate, and faced down Cronos. Buck had remembered his rifle so all he had to do was shoot the bear.

Trouble was, Cronos knew that. Bears are smart in that way and this one knew that in order to keep from becoming a rug he had to take Buck out.

They tell me bears are fast. Twenty yards is the amount of ground Buck claims one can cover before a man raises a rifle to his shoulder and pulls the trigger a second time. Buck knows this because his first shot missed Cronos and took out a hog.

Buck had wanted to get ahold of Cronos, but didn’t think he would be lying on his back when it happened. Zeke was there though and sank his teeth as deeply as he could into Cronos’ shoulder. After being knocked down by the bear, Zeke got up and went back for more. Repeatedly.

For better or worse, Buck’s wife, Bess, knew how to use a shotgun. She shouldered a twelve gauge and stung Cronos with some birdshot first from the back porch, then the oak tree, and finally the fence post.

The last blast was close range and got both Zeke and the bear.

Being shot with birdshot must have hurt because Cronos thought better about his meal of leg o’Buck and beat a hasty retreat.

Fate wasn’t as kind to Zeke. According to the vet there was no way to determine if the dog died from the injuries he sustained from the shotgun blast or the ones he got after being slugged by the bear.

Buck always teared up when he talked about seeing Zeke lying dead next to him. Sometimes he would even start one of those chest-heaving sobs before saying, “Zeke was collateral damage, killed by friendly fire.” Bess slapped him when he said that and claimed it was injuries from fighting the bear that killed Zeke.

Cronos and his cousins kept ravaging the hogs until Buck started losing money raising them. At Bess’s insistence, Buck kept on being a hog farmer until the losses and a few unlucky trips to the casino forced the bank to foreclose on the farm his family had owned for 250 years. Buck and Bess divorced right after that and he moved into a singlewide trailer on the back part of seven acres his son had purchased.

Regarding healthcare, here's what I see:

Buck is the American economy.

Bess is congress’ current healthcare plan.

Cronos is the rising cost of healthcare.

The hogs are the healthcare system.

The bank is China.

You are Zeke.

Be careful what you wish for.

A few words of wisdom

2009-08-24T20:18:00.000-04:00

Each day the company I work with, Raymond James Financial Services, posts a quote of the day on its internal website. They are always thought, provoking, and insightful.

Since everyone needs some occasional stimulus, I’ve listed some of my favorites here. Whip one of these around during a conversation and people will think you’re really smart, or weird. I usually get classified as weird. Anyway, here they are:

“If a man could have half his wishes he would double his Troubles.” – Benjamin Franklin I would have thought that quote came from Casanova.

“The strongest of all warriors are these two – time and patience.” – Leo Tolstoy

“You cannot force ideas. Successful ideas are the result of slow growth. Ideas do not reach perfection in a day, no matter how much study is put upon them” - Alexander Graham Bell. Bet he said that on a conference call.

My mama and daddy told me this one, only with different words: “Manners are like the zero in arithmetic; they may not be much in themselves, but they are capable of adding a great deal to the value of everything else.”

This one is true and it’s about to get really expensive: “Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must undergo the fatigue of supporting it.” - Thomas Paine
“The greatest truths are the simplest, and so are the greatest men.” - J.C. and A.W. Hare
“When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.” Helen Keller. A keen observation even though she couldn’t see.
“Maturity is the capacity to endure uncertainty.” - John Finley. Hope I get there one day.

“A proverb is no proverb to you till life has illustrated it.” - John Keats. I’ve lived a few of those.

“The pressure of public opinion is like the pressure of the atmosphere; you can't see it - but all the same, it is sixteen pounds to the square inch.” - James Russell Lowell. You don’t believe this, run for public office.

“A critic is a man who knows the way but can't drive the car.” - Kenneth Tynan You don’t believe this, run for public office.

“The business of America is business” - Calvin Coolidge. You don’t believe this, look around.

“Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen” - Mark Twain. Brad Pitt made a movie about this. I haven’t seen it yet. The thing is three and a half hours which stretches the time between meals out too much.

“The truth of the matter is that you always know the right thing to do. The hard part is doing it.” – Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, Jr. That’s probably a line from his conversation with George H.W. Bush when the General told the president he could take the Iraqi capitol and the president told him to hold his ground. Sadam Heussin danced in the street and declared victory.

“If necessity is the mother of invention, discontent is the father of progress” - David Rockefeller. Guess we’ll be making some real economic progress soon.

“A man begins cutting his wisdom teeth the first time he bites off more than he can chew” - Herb Caen. They don’t tell you that in business school.

“Tact is the art of building a fire under people without making their blood boil” - Franklin P. Jones. Radical commentators on TV and radio have made this a lost art.

“A good listener is not only popular everywhere, but after a while he knows something” - Wilson Mizner

“If you ask me a question I don’t know, I’m not going to answer” – Yogi Berra. Words to live by. Please forward this to every politician you know.

“Humor is...nearer right than any emotion we have. Humor is the atmosphere in which grace most flourishes - Henry Ward Beecher.

“A gentleman is a man who can disagree without being disagreeable” - Anonymous

“As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters” - Seneca the Elder.

Five of my favorites not on the Raymond James site:

“I had the right to remain silent…. But I didn’t have the ability” – Ron White

“We’re lost, but we’re making good time” – Yogi Berra

“You can observe a lot by watching.” – Yogi Berra

“If I didn’t wake up, I’d still be sleeping” – Yogi Berra

“The best prescription is laughing twice as much today as yesterday.” - Mike Fields. Try it.

What you don't expect this Football Season

2009-08-17T16:52:00.005-04:00

Byron Wien, the legendary investment strategist, starts each year with a list of ten things he thinks have a better than fifty percent chance of happening, but most people assign less than a thirty percent chance of the occurrences taking place. It’s always a great list.

The best thing about his methodology is that if you are right half the time, you can declare the venture a success. Being right more than six times puts one in the same prophetic sphere as Nostradomas.

Since I love college football and Wien’s method is perfect for prognosticating, I decided to apply his parameters to this favorite Southerner pastime. I came up with more surprises, but none relevant enough to take up column space. So, it goes like this:

1. The Oklahoma Sooners drop two regular season games.
Last season the Sooners received twenty-three more turnovers than they gave away, their QB won the Heisman trophy, two runners topped 1,000 yards each, and they played for the national title. Games are won in the trenches and that was the strength of the ’08 team. With only one starter back upfront, the offensive trenches will be the Sooners’ weak link.

2. USC stumbles and California’s Bears win the Pac-10 conference.
USC has more pigskin talent than the law should allow, but there are fewer weak sisters out west than in years gone by. That spells trouble for the boys from Troy. Look for the Pac-10 to send two teams to a BCS bowl and at least seven to bowls overall.

3. Penn State runs the table and plays in the national title game.
Joe Paterno’s team lost thirteen starters from 2008, but this is the weakest Big Ten in years. The Nittany Lions have enough talent at the skill positions to be favored in every game they play this season. Since there won’t be more than two undefeated BCS teams, the pollsters almost have to include Joe Pa’s boys when they sweep the season.

4. McCoy can’t deliver the goods to Texas
Colt McCoy has the perfect name to be the Longhorn’s quarterback and only Vince Young has played the position better in Austin. However, even McCoy can’t sweep thru the state of Oklahoma this season. It’s the Cowboys playing the spoiler. That single loss keeps the Horns from hooking up in the national title showdown.

5. Georgia’s Bulldog Nation is going to find it better to have a leader under center than an oversized talent.
Matthew Stafford had a cannon arm, but not enough intangibles. Last season the Dogs wilted whenever the heat was turned up. This year the retooled backfield will not match the ’08 version, but operating behind the SEC’s best offensive line and having an improved defense allows this junkyard gang to eclipse last season’s win total. Watch for Cass High grad Richard Samuel to be a difference maker.

6. Bobby Petrino hired as coach at Notre Dame
Arkansas returns eighteen starting Razorbacks from a team that finished strong. That should net them at least eight wins and a bowl game. However, don’t look for Coach Bobby Petrino to bask in the glory for long. Before the bowl game, he will slither away to accept the head coaching position at Notre Dame after they dump Charlie Weiss for not rejuvenating their lost glory. Count on Petrino leaving without saying good-bye to the players he promised to tutor for four seasons. It’s his trademark move.

7. Georgia Tech wins the ACC Title
Last season Tech ran different variations of about twelve plays. Look for Coach Paul Johnson to dig a little deeper into his playbook so he can further confound Yellow Jacket foes. In a league filled with parity, Tech emerges as the class of the ACC and league champion. Cartersville’s Joseph Gilbert and AT Barnes will become impact players for the Jackets.

8. The Yellow Jackets beat UGA again
Over seventy percent of you that care about this intrastate scrap are Georgia fans. That means you can’t fathom loosing two straight to an after-thought rival. The rest of us know that there is much better than a fifty percent chance UGA can’t figure out the new wrinkles in Johnson’s option offense. A trend is developing as the True Hate rivalry reemerges.

9. Florida’s players read the press clippings and the wheels fall off their season.
The Gators drop games to LSU, Georgia, and Florida State. Tim Tebow finishes second in the Heisman voting when Steve Spurrier intentionally doesn’t list Tebow on his ballot, but later calls a press conference to say the team ballboy filled out the list. Tennessee coach Lane Kiffin files a civil lawsuit against Urban Meyer for violating recruiting standards. The NCAA quickly sides with Kiffin and strips the Gators of all of their victories over the past five years and the two national titles won while Meyer was coaching. Notre Dame voids Bobby Petrino’s contract three days after hiring him based on discrepancies in the coach’s personality and signs Meyer to a fifteen million dollar deal. Petrino then accepts a lucrative head coaching position in the Wasilla, Alaska midget league. Ty Willingham will step into Florida’s top job after leading Washington to an 0-12 mark in his last stop.

Meanwhile, the Heisman Trophy goes to Georgia Tech’s Jonathan Dwyer who leads his team to victory over Penn State in the national title game.

Okay, it’s eight surprises and one really big wish-list.

No more Wrath of the Ignored

2009-08-07T18:09:00.006-04:00

My wife, Susan, had her gallbladder out fifteen years ago.

Gallbladders aren’t a necessity and since hers’ was wrecked the doc reached thru her bellybutton and plucked that sucker out. He said there were only four stones causing the problems, but they were so big that if they had been fish he would have had them mounted and hung on the wall.

When we got home, I checked on Susan and saw that she had dozed off into a nice sleep. It was early afternoon, I was tired, and she looked really comfortable taking that nap. I decided I would lie on the sofa and take a little nap too.

I can’t recall how long I slept or watched the Cubs’ game when I awoke, but when I went in the bedroom to check on her, the Wrath of the Ignored was unleashed.

“Where have you been?!” she asked in a wilted, but violently angry voice. “I’ve been calling you for three hours. My throat is so dry and every time I get up to try and get some water, it feels like my incisions are going to burst.”

Three hours seemed like a huge exaggeration, but it had been a really good nap. I got her some water, fluffed her pillow, apologized profusely, offered to carry her to the sofa so she could watch TV, and clean the toilets. My feeling really bad garnered no forgiveness or good will.

I can’t remember if Susan was a good nurse when she had a gallbladder. However, since losing that organ she is definitely absent the Sick Husband Compassion Gene.

Kids, of course, are excluded from the Wrath, but any non-life threatening illness I contract is classified as an egregious act. Give me a fever and hacking cough and the Wrath of the Ignored arises. At that point my normally compassionate, loving wife becomes impatient and irritated.

My philosophy relating to illness is to get to the doctor as soon as symptoms become present. This ensures that the proper germ killing medication can be prescribed and begin working. In such cases, I have found that early medication can shorten unpleasant hacking and wheezing by a minimum of three days. This is accomplished at an approximate cost of sixty dollars. I’ve been analyzing financial situations for fifteen years and can state unequivocally that three days of good health in exchange for sixty dollars is a very good value.

However, my wife pooh-poohs such ideas. Instead, she chooses to adhere to the “suck-it-up mantra” whereby you gut out whatever ailment is currently hindering you. If you are in that over eighteen male classification, failure to comply with the “suck-it-up mantra” requires having your Man Card not punched, but blasted with double ought buckshot.

You can imagine my trepidation one Monday morning when I admitted that a cough was yielding infectious material from my chest and I was feeling feverish.

“Here take some Motrin,” my lovely bride said as she handed me two orange pills.

I popped the medicine in my mouth, swallowed, and put a thermometer under my tongue.

“What are you doing?” she asked. “You just took two Motrin. If you have a fever it’s going away soon.”

The thermometer beeped and I pulled it out of my mouth. “One hundred one and a half,” I said.

“It’ll be normal in twenty minutes,” she replied.

I went to work.

The next night I hid in the closet and took my temperature, which registered one hundred and one. My teeth were chattering when I got in bed. I woke with a sweat drenched shirt the next morning and Susan declared my fever broken and pronounced me well.

The next day my temperature was up to one hundred and two so I called the doctor, explained my symptoms and asked for an antibiotic. He said to come in so he could examine me.

“You go to the doctor too much,” my wife said upon being told of my impending visit. “You just need something over-the-counter to kill that stuff.”

On Thursday morning the doctor put his stethoscope mid way down the left side of my back, listened to me breath deeply, and pronounced that I had a slight case of pneumonia. I told him he was wrong and that I only had a summer cold, but he and some other doctor I’ll have to pay but never saw viewed the chest x-ray and I was assured that I indeed had pneumonia.

When I got home I told Susan of the diagnosis. It was then that her beautiful chocolate chip eyes showed deep regret, compassion, and sympathy.

“Yes!!!” I thought. “The Wrath of the Ignored is dead!”

Oh, the joy of the redemption. Being miserable had never felt so good.

Special disclaimer: Of course my wife read this before it went to press. I’m not a moron.

Everybody needs an ocassional smack upside the head

2009-08-02T09:35:00.004-04:00

August 2, 2009

“Don’t be an idiot!”

Peanut Groves’ uncle Norman used to say that as he smacked one or both of us on the back of the head. Peanut and I were usually leaving his mama’s place to go somewhere on a Friday or Saturday night when Norman interrupted his reading to strike. This was a ritual while we were teenagers. We probably needed it.

Norman was a confirmed bachelor so Peanut’s mama fed him most nights when he was in town. He lived wherever he took a notion to stop and returned home for long periods when the urge struck. The guy was six-foot-four with a lumberjack’s build, and a scraggy beard that included hair growing from his lower eyelids. When he smacked us, we didn’t hit back.

Norman defined idiots as anyone that knew they were doing something stupid, but did it anyway. Idiots did stuff like using a beach towel to hang glide off the roof or shooting at a squirrel with a twelve gauge while the critter was running thru the living room.

Norman said idiots ended up in the hospital.

If you’ve known me more than ten minutes, you’ll recall that I once worked as a boat guide at the Okefenokee Swamp Park. Norman had worked at the park eons before and recommended Peanut and me when we applied for a summer job. The night before we went to work there, he smacked Peanut on the back of the head and told him not to be an idiot. I think he shook something loose because Peanut didn’t hear him.

While boat guides primarily drove tourist around in boats, we also performed other duties such as feeding the animals when the park curator and head of maintenance weren’t working. They both had the weekend off so on those days the task of feeding the animals fell to Peanut and me.

One Sunday I was feeding the bears when Peanut stuck his head out the door and blurted out, “Hey man, stop that and come check this out.”

I had just filled Hugh the bear’s trough and was rubbing his back. I was supposed to go back inside the building and wipe down the observation window so the tourists could sit comfortably and watch Hugh shuffle over to a pine tree, stand up, and scratch his back on the tree while he urinated.

I figured the tourists could look thru little kids’ handprints for a few more minutes, threw the two towels I was going to use over my shoulder and walked toward the sound of Peanut’s voice.

When I got outside, Peanut was squatting in front of one of the cages. Inside the cage Jack, the park bobcat, was waiting to be fed. Jack knew when it was feeding time and made a point to always be prompt and surly. The cat was pacing back and forth inside the concrete housing while Peanut dangled a raw chicken neck in front of the horizontal bars keeping Jack locked up.

“He ain’t quick enough to get it,” Peanut said without taking his eyes off the cat. I stood behind Peanut and smacked him upside the back of the head.

“You’re an idiot,” I said.

Peanut didn’t flinch and never took his eyes off Jack.

“Come get it,” Peanut said dangling the chicken next to the iron bars.

I saw the cat ease forward, but after that I either blinked or there was a once in an eternity flash eclipse of the Sun because I never saw that Jack move. He must have done something though because Peanut jumped up and yanked his arm back.
We both stood there with our mouths open while Jack held the chicken neck between his paws and pulled meat from the bone with his teeth.

“He snatched that right out of my hand without touching me!” Peanut shouted.
He held up his hand for both of us to see. The slit stretching from the knuckle of his index finger to the base of his thumb was filleted so neatly you would have sworn a fancy New York Sous Chef had made the cut.

I grabbed one of the towels on my shoulder and shoved it in Peanut’s mouth to muffle the sound of him screaming. I took the other towel and slapped it on his hand to stop the bleeding.

I was going to smack him upside the head again, but he passed out and fell on top of me before I could.

It looked like they used a whole spool of thread to stitch Peanut up in the emergency room. It made for a real nice scar.

A few days later the wind blew and Norman took off for a destination he hadn’t seen. That was twenty-five years ago this month. My family moved a year later and

Norman passed away before our paths crossed again.

I think of the hairy eyed man often and occasionally feel a heavy hand smack the back of my head and the words “Don’t be an idiot” ring between my ears. Every time I turn to see who hit me, only the wind is there.

I guess everyone needs that once in a while.

Braves will beat Damn Yankees for title

2009-07-27T09:55:00.001-04:00

July 19, 2009

The All-Star game was Tuesday night so it must be halftime for baseball season.

My illustrious career includes thirteen years as a player of the game and a lifetime of being a fan, critic, and analyst. So, given that knowledge, I’ll tell ya how it’s going to turn out in the second half.

Before beginning, I will admit that I am biased toward the Braves, Red Sox and Cubs. I used to have a hard time getting past that, but age and maturity have made me a better person. Here is goes.

In the American League where pitchers aren’t men enough to hit, the East division is flooded with talent. It was fun watching Tampa’s young Rays go to last year’s World Series, but a repeat of that performance isn’t in the offing. The guy they call “Big Papi” is heating up in Boston and the Red Sox will take the ’09 division crown. The Yankees spend more money than Obama and that will be enough to get them second place and a wild card playoff entry. Toronto is mired in mediocrity and the Orioles are rebuilding – still.

Move to the Central and you’ll see the Tigers, Twins, and White Sox are cluttering the top of the division. I like the Twins in spite of that ’91 thing where they stole the World Series from the Braves because Kent Hrbek pulled Ron Gant off first base and tagged him out.

The White Sox are looking good with former UGA and Westminster grad Gordon Beckham, but are a player short of the division crown. As for Detroit, nothing has gone right in Michigan for a few years and this team doesn’t have the moxie to end those disappointments. The Indians should be better than they are, but aren’t. The Royals have a great general manager, but he can’t hit. They’ll be better, but not before this season ends.

Out where it’s Pacific Standard Time, Los Angeles’ Angels will be the best in the West. The Texas Rangers should win that division, but they’re too used to fading away, which is exactly what they are about to do. The Mariners have Ichiro and little else which won’t be enough. Maybe the boys they have down on the farm will mature enough for Oakland to make a future run, but it won’t be ’09 (or ’10).

On the Senior Circuit, also known as the National League, the Manny Ramirez show makes the Dodgers a favorite in the West. I would feel better if the Dodgers called former Cartersville Cane Russ Mitchell to the majors, but I’d still hate them. It’s impractical, but I’m picking the Giants in an upset. Don’t rule out a late season Rockies run in Colorado that could foil my Bay City Boys prediction. It’s happened before. Arizona is in decline and when the Padres call up Cartersville’s duo of Will Startup and Donovan Tate, I’ll think more highly of them.

The NL Central Division is where the best player in the game resides. Having Albert Pujols will be enough for an otherwise sub par Cardinals team to win the division crown. Put the Cubs in second and give them a wild card playoff birth. The Brewers need more starting pitching to rule this land and the current break-even record for the Astros means they have reached their full potential. The Reds can’t get it together and the Pirates are the most mismanaged bunch in the game. Fortunately, their incompetence sent the Braves Nate McLouth.

The race that matters most is the NL East because that’s where the Braves reside. The Phillies are the reigning world champs and are beginning to play like it. New York’s Mets are injured and floundering. I hate the injured part, but I love the floundering. Florida has the best minor league system in the game, but that won’t put them over the top until next season, all the more reason to call up Cartersville's Lee Mitchell from the minors. The Washington Nationals are inept.

This brings me to my Bravos who don’t pack the offensive punch they need to be in the playoffs. They have plenty of hitters, but too few that consistently fly game balls over the fence. The current bunch is the best pitching staff at Turner Field since the breakup of Maddux, Glavine, and Smoltz. However, championships don’t follow teams that can’t consistently cross home plate more than three times a game. That’s the sickness plaguing the Braves.

If general manager, Frank Wren brings in a big hitter during the next month then the tomahawk chop will be back in vogue. Don’t pull off that trade and we’ll be playing for next year.

So here’s how it ends. After Wren pulls a trade for a slugger, the Braves win the NL East. The Bravos beat the Cardinals in the playoff’s first round and use their pitching to stymie the Cubs in the championship.

On the ledger’s other side, the Yankees take out the Angels and face their archrival Red Sox for the AL championship after the Beantown Boys ease past the Minnesotans.
It pains me to say the hated Yankees will beat my favorite AL team, the Red Sox, but I have to do it.

The AL won the All-Star game and that means game seven of the World Series will be played in the American League champion’s home stadium. It’s that brand spanking new stadium in New York where I want the Braves to extract their revenge for our ’96 and ’99 World Series losses to those Damn Yankees.

Okay, I’m biased and I carry a grudge.

Calling out Poseiden

2009-07-27T09:48:00.000-04:00

July 12, 2009

There’s something about a grown man standing in the Atlantic Ocean yelling for the Mythological Greek God of the Sea to send a big wave that makes passer-bys stop and stare.

My kids, their friends and I were doing just that about a week and a half ago. Some folks thought we were nuts, but they don’t understand serious boogie boarding.

For those of you unfamiliar with the sport, boogie boarding involves the art of riding a wave-propelled board onto an ocean shore. Game participants may number anywhere between two and infinity. The person winding up being thrown fartherest on shore wins.

Sounds simple, but it’s not.

Start with board choice, which is of utmost importance. As with most things, there are plenty of different boards to choose from. My personal preference is the Maui and Sons Chopper 41”. I have used the Hard Slick brand, also a 41” board, but the Maui and Sons has cooler designs on it.

If you are like most people you will skimp on the first couple of boards you buy because they are inexpensive, you are buying them for a ten year old, and the cloth cover has some pretty purple and black background design with a dolphin swimming across the bottom of the ocean. You may also reason that the child may only ride the board a few times, which if you buy a cheap board that breaks easily is true.
That board is probably 36” long or less and made of thin foam that is going to snap like a fresh picked green bean the first time you get rolled by a wave.

My kids and I have had our boards for three summers with no snap, crackle or pop. Over time you will find that it’s cheaper to spend three times more for a good board than buying four of the colorful fru fru ones.

After you get the board, you and your competition stand in the Ocean in waist to chest deep water and challenge Poseidon, the Greek God of the Ocean, to send you a big wave. You can also call him Neptune, his Roman name. If shouting either name doesn’t work it’s because mythological gods don’t really exist.

When the proper wave finally comes, you point the board toward the shore and push hard off the ocean’s bottom, leaping forward as the wave begins to crest.
Jumping onto your board so that your chin is three inches from its tip, you begin kicking your feet as if Orca the Killer Whale is trying to nibble your toes. It is important that you mount your wave as the water reaches the one or two o’clock position in its curl (provided you are riding in the Atlantic). This will allow the wave to break over you and later thrust you forward when the water completely collapses onto the shore.

Mounting the wave at the noon or ten o’clock position will leave you in the ocean watching your competition glide onto the beach. Wait and jump on the wave at the four o’clock position and the sucker will crash down on your back sending your head over your heels past the six and eight o’clock positions and breaking that pretty fru fru board you bought on sale at the Surf Shop.

As a side note, appropriate dress is recommended. I don’t know what’s best for the female persuasion because I’ve never worn their bathing suites. For guys it’s advisable to go shirtless and wear the most hydrodynamic trunks available. Speedos fit that description, but are not advised for men with body hair or protruding bellies. Projecting forward in a loose fitted bathing suite with big pockets is not a good idea either as water will fill the pockets and your britches might not make it to the finish line with you.

Once you have properly mounted your wave and are being thrust forward you will notice that you likely have a slight lead over your opposition. Shortly after you post this lead the weight differential will kick in and you will find yourself riding with your board slightly under the water while the kiddos are gliding past you on the water’s top. At this point you will want to be near the people you are racing so that you can reach over and knock them off their board before they beat you.

The competition learns that trick pretty quick and spreads out during later races. When that occurs I apply the sand-grab and pull technique. This involves reaching forward as your momentum slows, digging your hand into the hard sand and pulling the board forward. The action has to be done repetitiously and forcefully if there is any hope of passing the little munchkins relaxing on their boards while they drift onto the dry sand.

If you win, your competition will shout that you cheated due to your unethical practices. While this is true, I always use the opportunity to invoke section 1, article 1, clause 1 of the Boogie Boarding by-laws. Said by-laws state that the only rules applicable in Boogie Boarding are those made by the dictator. The dictator is always the fattest, ugliest, baldest, most disadvantaged contestant in the game. When I play, that’s me.

After boogie-boarding several hours a day for a week, you will discover that you have looked ahead and seen the hind end of your competition much more often than you looked back and saw their faces. You will also discover that boogie boarding will rub the skin clean off your belly.

When you pack up from the beach and go home, you can smile knowing that it wasn’t whether you won or lost at boogie boarding, but that you played the game.

Crap and Trade bill sent to Senate

2009-07-27T09:45:00.000-04:00

July 5, 2009

Sit down. You’re not going to like this.

Your cost of living is going to increase. You know this, but I doubt you realize by how much or from where.

Here’s the deal - if we want a cleaner environment, we are going to have to retool a lot of our electric generation practices. That’s a system overhaul renamed “Cap and Trade.” Argue about it all you want, it’s coming. 1200 pages of congressional mumbo jumbo have already passed the House. Now it’s in the Senate.
System overhauls are expensive. Since the upfront costs can sink a company, the government will raise taxes on you and me and give incentives to companies putting in the infrastructure Uncle Sam wants. Companies that are producing electricity with generation Uncle Sam doesn’t like get fined. The companies getting fined will be the ones supplying your power.

Stopping Cap and Trade legislation looks like an effort in futility. Modifying is what has to happen here and any changes have to include classifying nuclear energy as a renewable source. I’ll tell you why.

The South, particularly the Southeast, has some of the lowest electric rates in the nation. There are a number of factors driving this, the biggest being a substantial reliance on coal and fossil fuels. These fuels cost less than most other sources, but cause carbon emissions. That’s what Uncle Sam wants to limit. Under this legislation power companies heavy in fossil fuel generation will have to pay fines for carbon emissions that exceed the “cap.”

The simple answer to solving this problem is to build more renewable power generation, i.e. solar and wind generated power. Problem is the South doesn’t have enough wind or sunlight to consistently generate power from these natural resources. That means the fines companies based in the south will pay for carbon emission will go to support new generation in the West and Midwest where wind and solar are resources to support that generation. Southern electric generation companies can produce some power from these sources, but the generating is sporadic and trying to store it is like holding water in your mouth until you are thirsty.

Using biomass for generation is a nice idea, but until the efficiencies improve it will not generate enough electricity to meet much of our power needs. Building too many of these facilities could also stress other natural resources.

So green energy is good. I like it and think that in the future it will lower our reliance on foreign oil. However, for the foreseeable future, these sources won’t provide enough electricity to meet our basic demands.

Include nuclear as a renewable energy source and there will be enough generation to meet demand needs. We will also be able to level the playing field with the rest of the country.

This isn’t 1979’s Three Mile Island nuclear power production either. Technology has made nuclear generation safer, cleaner and more efficient than fossil fuels.
A physics fella named Bernard Cohen has developed a fast breeder reactor that generates fissionable material at a rate greater than it consumes the same energy.
It sounds complicated, but think of it like being like a pack of cannibal rabbits. They do enough of the activity that generates more of themselves than they can eat.

Right now India, China, Russia, Japan, France, and Korea are committing substantial funds to develop breeder reactors. Have I mentioned that nuclear is not recognized as a renewable energy in Congress’ Cap and Trade bill?

Without nuclear generation, the cost of your power will increase; our ability to obtain electric generation will shrink as will our competitive advantage in recruiting industry and business. With fewer businesses moving into the area, local governments will be more reliant on you. That will take the cost of owning a house up without the benefit of additional (and likely a loss of) services. In short, pay more and get less.

Wrap it up, put in a nutshell and here’s what it looks like – the energy bill that passed Congress and is in front of the Senate will increase the cost of your power and decrease the attractiveness of doing business in the South. With a decreased ability to recruit businesses that pay property taxes, you will end up paying more for services like roads, recreation, fire and police protection, and education. Taxes will go up. Services will go down.

There. Feel better now? I suggest you write and call your US Senators. Tell them nuclear energy has to be included in any energy bill as a renewable energy source. Emails help too.

My employer wants you to know that the opinions expressed here are mine and not those of Raymond James Financial Services; this report does not purport to be a complete description of the securities, markets, or developments referred to in this material; and does not constitute an investment recommendation.

Now get up off your rear, go to church, and thank God that you live in the greatest country in the history of the world, which in spite of its problems, you do. Leave money in the offering plate when it’s passed and have a great week.

By the way, cannibal rabbits don’t exist.

Tooth Fairy Economics

2009-07-27T09:42:00.000-04:00

June 27, 2009

The pulled tooth market is the most inefficient market in the world.

I recognized this some time ago and am reminded of it when one of my two children outgrows an incisor or molar and yanks it out. My oldest daughter is twelve and done snatching teeth from her mouth. However, my youngest daughter, Maggie, yanked one out recently.

In fact, it was a double yank. Maggie’s friend, Jordan, was spending the night and they both plucked out one of those ugly back teeth used to grind food. When Maggie’s came out Jordan jumped up and clapped her hands before blurting out, “Maggie, you’ll get five dollars for that tooth.”

“The heck, you say,” I quipped.

“Uh-huh,” she responded. “That’s what my cousin got. She lives in the next neighborhood and the Tooth Fairy brought her five dollars for one of her chewing teeth. They’re worth more than the biting teeth, except the top front two. Those are worth ten dollars!”

Turns out she’s right. Five bucks seems to be the going rate around our neighborhood although some people can’t seem to stay within reason and give ten. I did read on the internet that some kids get up to one hundred smackers a tooth. When I was in tooth pulling mode the Tooth Fairy left money that jingled, not folded.

Teeth attached inside of a person’s head are worth a bunch of money. Look at what we pay to keep them embedded in our gum. We dole out cash for toothpaste, a brush, and floss to do the twice daily maintenance; give money for expert cleaning a couple of times a year; and are charged fees so high to repair busted or rotted enamel that an insurance company has to get involved. If you really want to get fancy you whiten them, get veneers, or have them straightened. The last two usually require insurance and a payment plan.

There are some benefits--after all it’s tough to get proper nutrition without a natural cutting instrument to breakdown the food before it enters your throat. Then, there’s the many a romantic interlude first fueled by a glowing smile. Those increase the population which is usually good for the economy.

Still, the curious thing goes back to what the Tooth Fairy pays for the discards. Pull out a tooth and toss it in a dish and it’s worthless. Try selling one. I did, just to see. Couldn’t find a buyer. You can’t even find teeth listed on Ebay or Craig’s List unless they belonged to a Megalodon Shark or Tibetian Wolf.

In the end, most teeth end up in the river. At least that’s what the guy that runs the local sewer treatment plant says. Seems plucked teeth are processed there, crunched and dumped into the waterway where they become part of nature’s filtration system. So, the Tooth Fairy pays good money for a tooth and then flushes it down the toilet.

Keep a tooth in your head and you’ll pay thousands of dollars for it. Extract the thing and it trades at zero. Best I can figure the Tooth Fairy is running a massive money losing operation. I bet she’s subsidized by the toy companies, government entitlement programs, and, now, Barney Frank’s TARP cash.

Dig further and you’ll find a penalty system that’s really messed up. The five bucks my kid was supposed to get for the back chewing tooth turned into eight when the Tooth Fairy was three days late picking up. Al Capone didn’t charge those kinds of rates.

Oh, and don’t forget the pain and suffering clause. Found out about that one when Maggie was trying to pull her first top front tooth. She decided to use the old “slam the door” trick. That’s where one end of the string is tied to the tooth and the other to the doorknob. Once all the hookups are in place, it’s just a matter of slamming the door, standing still and out pops the tooth. Maggie got cold feet and ran forward when I slammed it. The string slacked up, the tooth stayed put, and we had to cut her loose.

Realizing her tooth was still in place, Maggie started crying. Untying the string from the tooth wasn’t an option, mainly because Maggie’s shrieks got louder and her kicking harder whenever anyone reached for her mouth. She couldn’t decide between pulling the tooth or going to school the next day with a string hanging from her mouth. It was a loud, long dilemma.

So there she sat on her bed, crying her eyes out with this silly looking string hanging from her mouth to her chin. After about thirty minutes, I snuck in close to her, grabbed the string and snatched it upward. She squealed really loud shattering a few glasses, and the tooth flew somewhere across the room. Maggie jumped up and down on her bed laughing loudly before hopping down and scouring the carpet for the pulled tooth.

The next morning $10 was under Maggie’s pillow and the tooth no doubt headed to the river.

I guess systems that produce unforgettable moments are worth good money.

Oscar's Dead

2009-07-27T09:40:00.001-04:00

June 20, 2009

Oscar’s dead. Finally. I’m a little ticked off it didn’t happen sooner.

That’s a mean thing to say, but the son of a gun tried to kill me once.

I shouldn’t blame him though. After all, Oscar had a brain the size of a golf ball. That’s standard issue on most alligators. Their processing capacity only handles reproduction, fear, and eating. However, terror or breeding didn’t seem to be on his mind when that over-sized lizard jumped out of the water at me.

Oscar was the kingpin of the Okefenokee Swamp Park where I worked three summers as a boat guide.

No one questioned his supremacy. He was about thirteen feet long, had a three-gator harem - One-Eyed Susie, Blind Susie, and Fred, who everybody figured was a guy until she laid eggs and built a nest. When Oscar was hungry, somebody fed him, when he wanted to sleep, he slept, and when he moved everything got out of his way.

The first time I saw Oscar, the Park’s maintenance guy, Johnny, told me to call the gator’s name. When I did, Oscar swam across a pond and walked up on the bank. Johnny stuck a pitchfork in a twenty-five pound turkey and slung it next to Oscar’s snout. The gator grabbed the turkey, jostled it around, and gulped it down whole.

“You don’t wanna to get too close,” Johnny said with a grin. Johnny was over sixty, had gotten a job on the Crew that built the Park thirty years earlier and never left.

“There’s a zone near his head that if ya step in, he’ll take you down. So, keep your distance.”

“I know,” I said.

“Oh yeah… you know,” Johnny said smiling even bigger. “You’re eighteen and you know everything. I knew everything when I was eighteen too. I’ve been trying to understand all it was I knew ever since.”

I furrowed my brow. Johnny laughed, grabbed the handles of his wheelbarrow and spun it around to deliver spoiled chickens to the gators in the pen. I thought he was a crazy old coot.

I didn’t mess with Oscar until a fish attacked me. Jackfish, which look like a smaller version of the Northern Pike, jumped in touring boats once every two weeks or so. It was hilarious when one of these two-pound, black jokers jumped out of the murky water and landed in some unsuspecting tourist’s lap. Those fellas packed a punch when they hit and the first thing people always thought was “snake!” Seeing the fish jump surprised me too, but I just cackled with laughter before calming the hysteric victim, grabbing the fish and throwing it back in the water.

It was funny, that is, until a fish landed in my lap. I was sitting on the back corner of the boat when one of those guys thumped me in the chest, bounced off my lap and into the boat’s floor. My heart jumped into my throat, my feet went straight in the air, and the rest of me flipped backward into the boat trail. After an underwater flip, I popped out of the stream, into the boat and decided that fish was going to meet Oscar.

Oscar was cooling off in a small pond next to the gift shop when I got back. Hearing me call his name, he swam over and crawled onto the bank so that about a third of his body was on land. I tossed the fish down next to his jaw.

“Right there Oscar,” I said pointing to the fish. Oscar turned his head and bit at the ground. I pointed and stepped closer. Oscar sensed the fish to his left, backed up a little and tried picking it up again with his teeth. When that didn’t work, Oscar turned his head to his right and started biting the ground.

I stepped closer. “Other side, Oscar,” I said easing down the bank and toward the water. That’s when I discovered the “zone.”

Oscar quit biting the ground. Then, as I pointed one more time at the jackfish lying in the mud, Oscar opened his mouth wide and leapt forward.

All I could see was the reptile’s fang-filled jaws hurling toward me. He was coming fast and furious. Blood rushed to my head, and my feet turned and sprinted.

They tell me gators can run up to forty miles per hour. In August 1984, I ran over forty-one miles per hour…. uphill… in boots.

Reaching the top of the bank, I stumbled and fell across a concrete walkway. Oscar was laying at the place I had vacated, his head raised and mouth open just enough to form a menacing grin.

I heard a familiar chuckle.

“I seen you with that fish, and figured you was gonna feed it to Oscar.” Johnny said, standing on the walkway fifteen yards back and holding a long wooden pole and an ax. “I figured I might haveta save ya. I guess now ya understand somethin’ ya already knew, huh?”

Johnny walked toward Oscar and poked the gator twice with the pole. Oscar slid back under the water so that only his nose and eyes shone. Johnny chuckled and walked away.

That old coot was smarter than I thought.

They preserved Oscar’s bones. He’s an exhibit at the Okefenokee Swamp Park. They use him to teach children about alligators. Hope they are pointing out where the strike zone is located. If they don’t know, I can show ‘em.

Random Thoughts

2009-07-27T09:36:00.001-04:00

June 13, 2009

You ever notice that the preacher always gives a longer sermon the week after returning from vacation?

Lots of baseball going on. I still can’t believe the Cartersville Purple Hurricanes won a fifth state baseball title in nine years. Kudos to Stuart Chester, his guys, their parents, and fans.

Top that off with star player Donnovan Tate being drafted third overall by the San Diego Padres in this year’s baseball draft and you’ve got two big news stories.

I’ve met Donnovan once and he made a good impression. I’ve only heard one person talk about him when not referring to his athletic prowess. That was the mama and daddy of a little boy. Before their son turned four they asked him what he wanted for his birthday. Sighing, he replied that he really wanted a real football player to come play football with him. The mama told her neighbor who taught at Cartersville High School. A few days later, Donnovan Tate (who also ranked as one of America’s top high school football players) rang the boy’s doorbell and asked if he wanted to go out back and play football. They played for an hour.

If that doesn’t make you want to cheer for Donnovan Tate then you must be awful crusty.

A little more on baseball, the University of Florida let Matt Hightower leave to go to Western Kentucky after his freshman baseball season. Matt’s a former Purple Hurricane. Since leaving GatorNation, he has started three years for the Hilltoppers, taken conference pitcher of the year this season, batted .300, played a great outfield, and helped his team have perhaps its best season in school history. Bet Florida could have used him when they fell two victories short of the college World Series this year. All you Gator Haters can smile about that one.

Matt’s season ended with a loss in the college baseball’s Regionals. The team that took them out in the final game was an Ole Miss Rebels bunch that included Matt’s younger brother, Taylor. If you don’t already know it, remember that freshman catcher’s name. Taylor has the quickest release coming out of the crouch that I’ve ever seen. Anywhere.

If Ole Miss had let Taylor bat against Virginia, the Rebs might still be playing. They lost in the Super Regionals.

Saw the movie “Hangover” at the theatre. Paid full price for an hour and a half of solid laughing. Throw in a high-priced Coke and one dollar bucket of popcorn and it was still a value. If you are not offended by frontal male nudity, words you got a spanking for saying when you were ten, or outrageous, criminal, and irresponsible stupidity, then you need to see this movie.

We get one dollar popcorn at Cartersville’s Carmike Theatre because we bought a ten-dollar bucket and take it back each time we go for $1 refills. It’s been a good deal, but I feel really stupid when I go to the bathroom after the movie carrying a big empty bucket. Some things you just have to do in a recession.

Played tennis with my wife recently. I last played twelve years ago. The city recreation department had some work done on the courts at Dellinger since then and it takes me longer to get from one side of the court to the other than before. They must have moved the stripes farther apart.

President Obama sending Israel an email of support rather than visiting while he was nearby in the middle east was a bad idea. That’s kind of like traveling two hours for dinner with a co-worker you’re trying to like and only waving to your first cousin who lives next door to them.

Speaking of the middle east, using an unscientific method, seventy-two percent of AOL respondents said they don’t think the US and Muslims will unit to battle extremism. I’ll vote with the minority on that one. Sooner or later, we won’t have a choice.

Last thought on baseball. One of my friend’s son was pitching in a Summer League game recently. I got there in time to watch him throw a couple of innings. The son’s name is Clay. He’s 16, has college level talent and will probably be a starter on a very good Cobb County high school team next season. Two errors by his teammates kept him from holding some boys from Coosa scoreless. Late in the game, Clay went in to play rightfield and made a running shoestring catch that saved a couple of scores and sent the game into extra innings. His team won on a walk-off home run. Quite exciting.

Clay was born with only one hand.

This week I’m not going to say the word can’t. Hopefully, I’ll eliminate it from my vocabulary altogether.