MLK Monday

Today was the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. and most of the banks and courthouses and such were closed. Apparently, most of my clients assumed that I would be closed as well, because I went to my office and took a whopping three phone calls in the morning.

I had arranged to hold a meeting with a prospective client at her house in Fayetteville at 2:00, so I told Cindy and Kate that I was going to Fayetteville after lunch and invited them to join me for the trip. After lunch we hopped in Kate's car, turned the radio on to the WABE pbs station so we could listen to the MLK program from Atlanta.

After listening to the broadcast to Fayetteville, I dropped Cindy and Kate off at Target and headed to my client's house. After meeting with my client, I headed back to Target and followed Cindy and Kate around Target until it was time to buy popcorn and pretzels and soft drinks and sit down inside the Target and enjoy the afternoon.

Afterward, Cindy walked down to Marshall's and we took the bounty of Target back to our car. Afterward, Kate and I walked over to Marshalls and I noticed the shoe extravaganza sign above the entrance.

After spending an inordinant time in the shoe department of Marshall's, I showed Kate and Cindy a couple pair of shoes that looked good and they agreed and the I left them on layaway for later when I had more money. I didn't realize that my bank was open that day. Oh well.

Later, we drove over to ULTA so Cindy and Kate could buy cosmetics. Afterward, we drove back to Griffin and I heated up some of my shrimp and orzo from Sunday afternoon and went and bought a bag of salad to complete the meal. Kate and I did drive over to Dairy Queen for dessert.

Now, it is time to finish the day and head into Tuesday.

A dose of Chicago blues for some white boys from Dunwoody

When I was still in high school, but old enough to enter a bar (back in the days when you could drink alcahol at the age of eighteen), a bunch of my buddies and I went down to Underground Atlanta. We were stepping down the streets and looking at the sights when the sound of r & b came wafting up from a nightclub below the street level (which means, of course, that the music was coming up from the sub-basement, since we were below street level in Underground). The sound of the band sounded pretty good, so we headed down the steps toward the nightclub.

When we got down to the level of the nightclub we encountered an older black gentleman in a suit taking cover charge payments. He grinned at us and said, "Five dollars, gentlemen."

With this, we looked past the bouncer and peered into the darkness at the interior of the club. You couldn't see much, but there was an implication that there weren't too many patrons from Dunwoody sitting around the room.

We looked at the bouncer and looked at each other and slowly turned around and headed back up the steps to the main level. The bouncer smiled and said, "I didn't think so."

I suppose the inference was that there wasn't much of a chance that ten high school boys from Dunwoody would want to enter a black night club in Underground Atlanta on a Friday night in 1975.

A little bit later in the year, we were sitting around Gary Defilipo's kitchen and Gary decided to call the information line at the Great Southeast Music Hall in Broadview Plaza to see who was playing that night. The voice on the recorded message asked the following question, "Do you want to hear three hundred and fifty pounds of the best Chicago blues?"

I remember the look on Gary's face when he turned to us after listening to the message. There was a look of amusement and slight wonder as he let us listen to the message as it replayed itself. With this, we piled into a car and headed down toward Broadview Plaza.

When we got there, the early show had already started, so we headed downstairs to the bowling alley below the level of the Music Hall. We began playing several games and John deposited about eight quarters in the juke box so he could hear "Down South Jukin" by Lynnerd Skynnerd about sixteen times in a row. At some point, one of the other patrons had had quite enough of the boys from Jacksonville, or was it the boys from Dunwoody, and pulled the plug on the juke box. I remember specifically John getting ready to release his ball down the alley when the juke box went "whirr" and the music came to a stop.

Later, we exchanged our own shoes for the bowling alley fashions and headed back up to the Music Hall. That night there were about twenty of us in the venue and we bought our metal buckets of cheap beer and carafes of cheaper wine and sat down on the floor, Music Hall style, and waited for the opening act, a young bearded fellow named Gove Scrivenor. A little later the pa announcer came on and announced the arrival of said Gove Scrivenor.

With this, a young guy walked up to the stage, leading a dog, and carrying a burlap sack on his back. He sat down, deposited the dog at his feet, and pulled a guitar from the sack. For the next hour he played traditional folk music and original songs for us, as his dog calmly sat at his feet. At the end he pulled an autoharp from the bag and played a few songs on that.

After he finished his set, several of the patrons departed and the room was left to us and another couple. A little later, the announcer came on and announced the Chicago Blues All-Stars. With this, several African American musicians took the stage, plugged in their instruments and began playing a blues instrumental. It was great.

After several instrumentals, one of the musicians stepped to the mike and asked for applause for Willie Dixon. With that, we clapped and whooped and a very large black man came from offstage up to the stage, climbed the two steps to the stagefloor, and took possession of a stand-up bass fiddle. At this, the band began to play some of the best Chicago blues, no the first Chicago blues, we had ever heard.

Now when I say that it isn't quite accurate, since Willie Dixon is responsible for a large catalog of songs which were recorded over several decades by blues singers and British musicians like Eric Clapton and the Rolling Stones and white rock bands like The Allman Brothers. However, we had never heard it live and done by the author himself, with his own band. The experience was amazing.

When we were in high school and college we used to refer to such experiences as "cosmic" in that they were so new and different that they changed the way we thought about music and reformed our musical preferences. This particular night was such a night. Afterward we were scrounging around record stores and such trying to find anything by Willie Dixon, something that wasn't that simple in the modern world.

However, by the end of the evening, we had migrated down to the front of the room and were clapping and yelling and whistling for everything they could play. We were a small, but very appreciative group and Willie Dixon and his band seemed to enjoy the whole experience.

At the end of the concert, we jumped off the floor and shook hands with the band. I will never forget how huge Willie Dixon's hands were. They seemed to wrap around mine twice.

We went back to listen to Willie Dixon and his band at the Music Hall later and it was really something, but the crowd was much bigger and the experience not so immediate as our first encounter with the Emperor of Chicago blues.

Music has amazing powers to move you and change your point of view. There was such a difference between our first, aborted foray into black music and the second one. Only several months separated those two incidents, but such a difference. I still love the music, and would probably not hesitate to enter the night club now. A lot of things have changed.

Jets Win Again!

Today has been a lazy day; however, I got to see the Jets advance to the AFC championship. I don't necessarily think they can beat the Colts next week, but they do have the best defense and the best running attack in the AFC. Perhaps that means that they can stop the Indianapolis attack and just keep the clock running long enough to get to the Super Bowl. That would be fun. I haven't had this much fun since Richard Todd was their quarterback and Klecko, Gastineau and Lyons were the defensive front four. I realize that's only three; I just don't remember the fourth

It has been gloomy today. I got some reading done while Cindy and Kate were watching Glee on a dvd. Now Cindy is watching 24 and Kate is watching the Golden Globes. That sounds strange.

Making the best of it

Its been raining since this morning and it got harder around about the time we were supposed to go over to the Methodist church for the wedding. We drove over to church and I dropped Cindy and Kate off out front and I wandered through the parking lot trying to find a space that wasn't submerged in the gathering rainwater. I finally made my way back to the rear of the church and pulled the umbrella out, opened it while the rain played a tune on the back of my head, then walked back across the campus to the front.

At this point it looked like they were getting ready to start the wedding processionals as everyone seemed to be waiting in the entry hall (I don't know what Methodists call them) and I sneaked in and finally found Cindy and Kate and sat down. The church was full, about as full as it was for Judge Whalen's funeral. I remember that it was sunny. No rain.

The wedding was nice. The music was beautiful. As a matter of fact the entire wedding, reception and all, was filled with music. The band at the reception was delightful. The food was good too. Barbecue and cheese grits and stewed tomatoes. A nice combination.

But ultimately we had to leave and the tracks of all the cars which had been parked on the lawn had dug deeply into the earth, and the rain had created a miniature swamp in the front yard. Kate and I were walking across the front yard and she had high heels. The muck kept sucking off my shoes. I remembered the Battle of New Market in the Civil War and the VMI keydets had marched up from Lexington and played a key role in the battle, no pun intended, and many had lost their boots in the muck of the battlefield.

We tried to extricate the car out of the mess, but mainly made more mess with the tires, then Ralph Jones led us around the yard to a place where we could get off the mud and on to the asphalt and back to the house to pick up Cindy.

It was a nice evening. I really enjoyed being with everyone. Even in the rain.

It is still raining. It is tomorrow already and it is still raining. It is time to go to bed. But it is still raining.

Changes in temperature

Yesterday I got to drive down to Warner Robins for a closing and when I got there the temperature was too hot for the sweater I was wearing at the time. The weather in this part of Georgia can fluctuate so much during January and today is a good example of that. I had to drive over to the office to meet with someone and when I left the house it was drizzling and getting colder. It feels much more like Georgia in January right now. It is also getting kind of dreary. I had to go to Kroger this morning and I bought their prepared soups for lunch.

We have a wedding this afternoon and fortunately it is in the church in our back yard, that is, First Methodist Church, which is around the corner from our house. That will make it easier to maneuver this afternoon.

I am hoping for some football this afternoon, but I don't know if that is going to happen.

I'm clearly not getting anywhere this afternoon. Perhaps I can revisit this later in the day.

The Good Old Days

This afternoon I was caught up in the arms of a large wave of nostalgia as I got on facebook and found it was throwback day and everyone was encouraged to change their profile picture to one from long ago and then I found a blog site which had a story about Piano Red at Muhlenbrink's Saloon in Underground Atlanta and then continued to talk about the acts at the Great Southeast Music Hall. It took me back to when John and Machie and I used to go to Underground and then when a bunch of us used to go to the Great Southeast Music Hall in Broadview Plaza to listen to musicians and comedians and enjoy the ambiance of a small room seating around five hundred patrons with seat backs attached to the floor, with cushions on the floor, drinking beer out of metal buckets or wine from carafes and eating soft pretzels.

The first act I was supposed to see was Doc Watson and we bought our tickets then arrived at the Music Hall only to find that we weren't able to come in because we were under age. Of course, it wasn't that much longer until we turned eighteen and were going every weekend or so to listen to someone. The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Doug Kershaw, Greg Allman, Jesse Colin Young, Emmy Lou Harris, Steve Martin and Martin Mull, Savoy Brown, B B King. The list was endless.

The most amazing trip started one Saturday night at Gary Defilipo's house, when we were looking for something to do and called the information number at the Music Hall. The recorded message said something about wanting to listen to three hundred fifty pounds of the best Chicago blues. It sounded interesting, so we drove down to Broadview Plaza only to get there too late for the eight o'clock show, so we walked down to the bowling alley beneath the hall and bowled a couple of games. John had put eight quarters into the juke box to play "Down South Jukin" by Lynnerd Skynnerd, but someone got tired of hearing the same song over and over again. John was getting ready to roll his ball down the lane when the juke box abruptly stopped and John turned to see why the music had stopped.

Later, we walked upstairs and watched a young man, Gove Skrivener, walked onstage, leading his dog on a rope and played the guitar and autoharp on traditional music. Later, he and his dog left and a number of African American musicians took the stage and began playing blues. Of course, none of them looked like they might weigh three hundred fifty pounds. After several songs, a huge man came up and climbed the stage and began to play the stand up bass. It was amazing. There were so few people in the hall at the time that we came up to the front row and sat and listened to the music up close. Later, when the set was over, we stood up and shook hands with the entire band. It was great. Willie Dixon's hands were huge; his fingers were as large as sausages and they were all so happy to stand there and talk and socialize with us for a few minutes afterward.

One night we went to see a double bill with Steve Martin and Martin Mull. That was pretty cool. On the night before graduation, we went down and saw Thermos Greenwood and the Colored People play as warmup acts for the band that sang "On the Cover of the Rolling Stone." The most memorable part of that was that everyone in the band was totally wasted except one guy. After the concert, we ran into the band in the parking lot and they were all polluted, except for the one guy who was about as mad as I had seen someone in that situation.

There were other places too: Alex Cooley's Electric Ballroom, P J Kenney's in Underground, Charles McGruders on Power's Ferry, even the bar in Cumberland where the bartenders would make adult milk shakes and give me the extra out of the blender for free. Fun times. I loved the frozen white russians.

Here, there and again

He can feel the river's current from that time
With the aid of a little music
And a quiet place
To sit and reflect
And remember a young man
Sitting in the dying light
Of an afternoon in the Shenandoah River Valley
Thinking on a girl lying in the sun in Southern California,
Who once turned and smiled and
Sent him swirling off
To the sweet patter of raindrops falling against the window
Where he takes notice of the afternoon light fading on the wall
And hears the same sad tune
And you appear, here and there, again.

329 South Hill Street: five thirty six

The five o'clock sun is bleeding
Through the lace curtains
Upon the wall across the Wyeth print
Hanging there in its stoicism
And the neighborly farmers
Are leaning against their truck
Solemnly watching the end of their day,
Somber and grey and the blues
Are playing in my ears
To celebrate the end of this day
And the season dying in the arms
Of this cold and dreary January,
The sweet taste of old bourbon
Caressing my tongue, adding to the harmony.

Kate's beginnings

Twenty four years ago, Cindy and Kate were spending their last day at Piedmont Hospital before the cold, cold world welcomed Kate to the first Winter of her life. I specifically remember carefully tucking her into her car restraint seat and getting into the driver's seat and putting a Bach tape into the tape player in our Volkswagen Jetta. The first music that Kate listened to was Bach and Elvis. Just my little way of broadening her musical horizons. The control of the music in the car has been a struggle between the three of us ever since.

When we returned home to Griffin, our friends had placed a wooden stork in our front yard with a pink bundle from his beak. Twenty four years later we drove Kate up to Atlanta and let her pick out stuff at IKEA, then ate lunch at Fado's, an Irish pub, then finished up at a movie at Midtown Art. On Sunday, we drove back to Dunwoody and celebrated with momma and Susan and Kevin and the girls. Roast beef, mashed potatoes, green beans and hot buttered rolls. Followed by coconut cake and cups of hot tea for the ride back home.

Dogs and cats, redux

There is so much diversity of opinion on the differences between cats and dogs. So many people who are dog people really dislike cats. You can also get cat owners who dislike dogs, although not to the same degree. Nevertheless, I am of the opinion that cats are proof that God can turn all things to the good. Cats are soft and make a sweet purring noise, but they are hard to control, have sharp claws and will generally ignore you when you try to get them to do something. This is intended to teach you that you are not in charge, that there are limitations to what you can do, and that you cannot control your environment completely. These are all good lessons, but sometimes hard to accept. Acceptance may be motivated by a trip to the zoo and a visit to the large cat area of the zoo. There is nothing like a few moments staring into the vacant eyes of a Bengal tiger to remind us of our mortality. If you can't get behind that message, than you might find yourself inside the tiger. That is not a position in which you want to find yourself.

Dogs are problematic in the sense that they give us a false sense of superiority. Although I must say that the failure to train a dog is usually the failure to train the dog's owner. If we can be introspective, we might learn from dogs as well. Loyalty and unconditional love are good lessons to learn.

Fly Williams and the Governors

I was reading about James "Fly" Williams, who went from Brooklyn to Clarksville, Tennessee and back again. Apparently, APSU retired his jersey number 35 last year and his former coach passed away about thirty days later. Now Fly works for the City of Brooklyn Dept. of Recreation.

When I was a young teenager, Sports Illustrated did a story about this freshman basketball player at Austin Peay, where both my parents went to college. Fly was from Brooklyn and had somehow been recruited to play for Austin Peay. In his freshman year, he was fifth in the nation in scoring percentage and lead the Governors to their first appearance in the NCAA's (March Madness). They actually won the first round game against Jacksonville, then lost in overtime to Kentucky.

I remember listening to the APSU-UK game on the radio. I think that may be the only time I pulled for the other team against Kentucky. Fly had 26 points in a loss.

The next year, they played in the opening round against Notre Dame and Adrian Dantley and got beat. Afterward, Fly had enough of playing in Clarksville and was drafted by the Denver Nuggets in the ABA, later going to the St. Louis Spirits, where he encountered a young broadcaster, Bob Costas.

Apparently, the ABA in those days was quite a wild affair. I always liked the ABA because they had a team in Louisville and Indianapolis. I still don't understand why the Kentucky Colonels didn't make it in to the NBA. Maybe the same reason they couldn't keep a major league baseball team in Major League Baseball.

I had a pair of red, white and blue adidas basketball shoes back in those days and actually found a red, white and blue ABA ball. As Cindy says, I am a contrarian. If everybody liked the NBA, I liked the ABA. When everyone was pulling for the Colts in Super Bowl III, I was pulling for the Jets. It was all about Joe Namath, but what I didn't know at the time was the Jets had a defensive coordinator from Washington and Lee: Walt Michaels. That would have clinched my love for the Jets. I hope they win next week against the Colts.

I would like to meet Fly Williams some day. I don't think I will fly up to New York to see if I can find the recreational facility in Brooklyn. Maybe we will find our mutual ways to Clarksville some day.

By the way, another good player on that APSU team, Percy Howard, later found his way into the NFL and caught a touchdown pass for the Dallas Cowboys in the Super Bowl. How about that for touches of greatness?

By the way, the student's chant during basketball games in those days? "The Fly is open; let's go Peay!" How about that for a cheer?

Letdown

After all the drama of the past few days concerning the possibility of snow today, then all of the coverage and even the preemption of network morning shows for the coverage by the locals of the weather stories, it snowed about enough to appear a powder sugar frosting by a very careful pastry chef. Not too much. Just a faint dusting on the top.

I awoke this morning and looked out the window on the off chance that there was a real coverage of snow on the ground, to see very little evidence of frozen precipitation. No, instead, there were patches of snow frosted on the grass, in other people's yards, and on the roofs of the houses across the street. I didn't even get the chance to try Tex out on the snow and ice to monitor his reaction.

Instead, I microwaved some sausage biscuits, showered and dressed and drove in to town on streets which were very quiet from the threatening of snow and the closing of the local schools.

Well, it is still quite cold out and perhaps we will get some snow later in the Winter, in late January or February.

Snow?

It wasn't quite as cool as the day before this morning, and certainly not as cool as it was on Tuesday morning, when I was standing in the shadow of the facade of the Walton County Courthouse, feeling the wind blow through me without much provision for shelter from columns or other such architectural provision for my comfort. No, instead, it felt more like a normal January Thursday in Georgia and the strips of baby blue were showing through thin clouds above.

However, now it is different. Since lunch, the clouds have taken over and we are anticipating some type of precipitation, frozen or otherwise. There is little wind and the whole town looks as if it were holding its breath, waiting.

At these times, some get rather cynical and figure nothing of great importance will occur. And I will admit that it seems as if the best, thickest snows occur without much fanfare or anticipation by the meteorologists. We just awaken one morning and there is a thick layer of snow on the ground and the branches of the trees and roofs of the houses in the neighborhood.

At these times, you might get lucky and glimpse a bright red cardinal flitting among the bushes or pecking at seeds on the ground. But the best part of these mornings is the opportunity to walk outside and feel the silence around you. The snow muffles the world around us and the quiet is palpable.

Walking among the flakes, the intrusion of a car or truck is ugly and rude, but lasts only a brief moment. Most of the streets are bereft of vehicles and into this quiet, safe world, I used to let Molly run loose, for she seemed to really enjoy the snow.

When I was a sophomore in college, Don and Bill and I were driving back to Lexington when we encountered a heavy snowfall as we crossed the mountains near Fancy Gap, Virginia on I-77 from Charlotte to Wytheville, Virginia. We turned on the radio and learned that I-81 from Wytheville to Roanoke was closed due to the snow. We ended up driving across the mountains on little state highways from Fancy Gap to Roanoke, only picking up I-81 near Roanoke and following the normally forty five minute route back to Lexington, which now took about two hours.

As we drove slowly north on I-81, you could see the headlights of cars spinning in the darkness in front of you. Everywhere we went were cars whiched had slipped off the interstate onto the side of the highway. When we finally made it to the Lexington/Buena Vista exit, and drove on the state highway toward W&L, we were still encountering cars stranded on the side of the road.

It was very late when we finally made it to our digs in Lexington and the snow continued to pile up around town. I put my black stetson cowboy hat and my peacoat on and walked around town in the snow. The streetlights were illuminating the half dollar size flakes as they fell from the sky.

The next day would be classes and the weeks leading up to the Fall exam period. Meanwhile, the snow would continue to come down and the ice and snow and slush would remain on the ground in Rockbridge County until the third week in March. In early March, before the end of the Winter semester, I was able to drive up to Harrisonburg and Massanutten and take the one final skiing lesson I needed to complete my hours for skiing p.e.

That was a snowfall.

Snow and snow and snow

Tonight we are sitting in the living room and all of the meteorologists in Atlanta and other nearby environs are watching the meteorological data and trying to figure out whether, where, when and how the weather will be coming tomorrow. For seven days they have been predicting some type of frozen precipitation and, depending on who you listen to and when, we might get some tomorrow or early in the morning or later during the day.

So, now we wait. And watch.

I am looking for a little snow. I would like to see how Tex responds. I used to love to watch Molly in the snow. As soon as the snow fell and no cars were running on the streets, I could open the door and let her out and Molly would run out into the snow, her liver spots on her white coat providing the only color to the scene. She loved the snow. She is the only dog I have ever had with whom I rode down a snowy hill in a trashcan lid, face to face, nose to nose. When the lid hit a mogul and spilled us both out on the icy hillside, the first thing that Molly did was hop up and lick my face.

Dogs are great.

Its cold and getting colder.

Andy and Barney are long gone now

Georgia Route 36 between Jackson and Covington was painted in tans and greys as I drove toward Monroe. Other than a few red barns along the road and an occasional wreath left over from Christmas, there was very little color on the Winter palate. Nevertheless, the scenes were quite peaceful despite the other cars on the road. By the time I got on Georgia 11 from Monroe toward Winder, I passed old farms, now cut into residential lots and commercial tenancies begging for tenants. Despite the urban sprawl of strip malls and fast food restaurants, you could still see the remnants of the agricultural past and even a few working farms along the road.

I ultimately headed up from Jefferson and the Jackson County Courthouse, once found in town along the road to Gainesville, now relocated to a former pasture out away from town, toward Commerce, to find the road which leads from Commerce to Homer, the county seat of Banks County. Banks County is one of the smallest counties in Georgia, and other than a development of outlet mall stores and the attendant gas stations and restaurants hugging the interstate, the county is one of the less developed counties in Georgia as well.

Homer is its county seat and a sign as you enter the city limits lets you know that the citizens of Homer hold the world's largest Easter Egg Hunt in April. Other than that, a rusted cotton gin, still decorated with the name of the company which ran same back in the days when the cultivation of cotton reached from the Florida border to the border with North Carolina and Tennessee. Now the large tin gin building is the repository for old rusted automobiles, parked here and there around and on top of the gin building.

When I was practicing in Toccoa, about fifteen miles to the east of Homer, I was sent by one of the lawyers to the jail in Homer to interview one of the inmates for a civil matter for which we provided insurance defense. I drove through the hills westward toward Homer and found the county jail, comprised of two cinder block buildings sharing a roof and a dogtrot between, just up a hill from the old courthouse, which consisted of, at the time, a two story red brick building, with a central hallway from the front to the back of the building, with offices on the first floor, and a double stairwell climbing the front outside wall to a second story courthouse.

I parked my car in front of the county jail and looked for a jailer or deputy sheriff to let me in to the jail to speak with our client. No one was around the right building which held the jail cells. I walked back over to the left building and found an older woman sitting in front of "The Price is Right" talking to someone on the telephone. When she looked up and noticed me she hung up the phone and asked me if she could help me.

I explained my business and she took the large ring of jail keys and led me back over to the eastern building, opening the door and calling for one of the inmates to come up and speak with me. A young teenaged boy came out of the darkness and followed me to the deputies' break room, where the sheriff's wife left us to go back to the television in the other side of the county jail.

After a few moments of discussion, my client decided he needed something from his cell, so he left me in the breakroom and walked over to the room with the sheriff's wife and came back with the keys to the jail cells. Opening the jail door, he walked into the jail cell area, leaving me to hold my hand on the outside of the cell door in case the inmates decided to rush me and escape.

But the client returned from his cell and closed the door behind him, leaving the keys on the shelf outside the cells. After we finished our interview, I asked him if he wanted to be put back into his cell. He said, "no," that he would be eating lunch soon and would just stay outside until lunch was served.

I suggested that he had it pretty good in this jail. He informed me that he got three meals a day, rather than the required two in other county jails. That he and the other inmates could leave the jail on Friday and Saturday nights to enjoy the evening, as long as they were locals and were back at night. Only one of the inmates was not a local, and she had to stay in the jail all the time.

As I pulled away from the front of the Banks County jail, I left my client waving from in front of the dogtrot of the jail.

When I was there today, the county has a new courthouse and it appears that the jail has been amended to make it more secure. The old "Andy of Mayberry" feel is gone, and I suppose that was inevitable. But when you drive through Homer, you can still see the remnants of that long time ago.

Abandoned intersection

There is an old tin gin building
Standing tall but abandoned
On the side of Highway 441,
Within the city limits of Homer.
The shadows of its rafters
Have been swept almost free of cotton lint
And the spectres of old farm wagons
Long ago replaced by rusted old chevys
And buicks and pontiacs
Towed here from the side of some road
To rust and wither and fade
Into the shadow of the dying season,
The memories of cotton crops
Receding into the twilight
At the abandoned intersection
Of these remote and recent pasts.

That Jack Ruby moment

I am watching Jay Leno and he is interviewing Tim Allen and Tim Allen was talking about encountering a fan and the guy is reaching into his coat pocket and Tim Allen described this as his "Jack Ruby" moment and then he did a creditable imitation of Lee Harvey Oswald grimacing as he reacts to the gunshot wound and describing how the entire audience would be looking on in shock and awe at the moment and it occurred to me that you really had to be a certain age and orientation to feel that moment and understand what Tim Allen was getting at when he referred to the "Jack Ruby" moment. The imitation was good, but the damage, as you might say, was already done because just the reference to "Jack Ruby" opened the wound from your memory and you could see that moment when the Dallad police detective grimaced and Lee Harvey Oswald doubled over in the initial pain of the bullet going through his stomach and the dark figure of the nightclub owner, Jack Ruby, his back to the camera, brandishing the 38 revolver toward the accused, soon to be lying on a slab in the Dallas morgue.

That was, I believe, November 24, 1963, in the morning, two days after the assassination of President Kennedy in Dealy Plaza in Dallas, Texas. Some things just don't go away. The wound was picked at until it festered and never healed. Some wounds are like that.

Military and Football allegories

After receiving my marching orders for the morning from headquarters in North Decatur, I discussed the battlefield with my lieutenants and made provision for their part in the battle tomorrow. Now the various places to which we all must travel are covered, despite the fact that I had to bring in a new trooper to cover part of the theater. Nevertheless, we expect cold weather tomorrow and perhaps ice on the roads as we travel.

Cindy has already made plans for my equipment, with flannel-lined pants, sweaters, jackets, heavy shoes. My transportation is sound now and I look forward to the travels tomorrow. These days, there seems to be little that I can depend on from the standpoint of my business, other than the fact that there always seems to be more from season to season. These foreclosure sales are one of the few parts of my present business on which I can depend. That is sad, perhaps, but something that must be done.

In my office, I have a poster of an Andrew Wyeth painting depicting a farm in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. There is nothing in the picture which would clue you in to its subject, other than the barns and the pastures trailing off into the distance. However, this is a picture of a farm foreclosure. Knowing that, the somber colors and the stillness of the scene have always caught my attention and I knew I wanted a copy of the poster for my office.

The picture itself is interesting. The textures of the painting are more interesting. The grass and the tracked mud on the drive in to the scene are wonderful. One of the people in the picture, shown from the back, at a distance, is wearing a red coat. Other than that, most of the colors are browns and tans and greys.

The picture is a testament to the somberness of the task. When I drive around North Georgia on these monthly foreclosure sales, I enjoy the drive, the country through which I travel, if not the actual meaning of the task. So many a lawyer's duties require a certain amount of philosophy to take on the business without being overtaken emotionally by the gravitas of the task.

Still, I served as an offensive lineman in football long enough to realize that not every task in the game requires the glory available to a running back who scores or a receiver who catches the ball in its trajectory and carries it into the end zone or the quarterback who starts the play. So much of the game requires a lineman's careful plodding. In foreclosures, one must act as an offensive lineman, who takes on his dull task despite the lack of glory and the requirement of simply completing the task.

Of course, where is the linebacker in this game? There are few linebackers in foreclosure sales. I don't see them much. I remember seeing a lawyer in LaGrange who was representing a foreclosed party, trying to stop the foreclosure process. Perhaps he was a linebacker in this game. There are very few out there. I was a linebacker for so long. It would be nice to take on that sly, skillful predatory mantle again.

Temperatures in the teens and twenties

At this point we have run out of excuses. Christmas is behind us. New Year's is also in our wake. 2010 is here and we are required to carry on in to the new year. Last year, I was in the process of moving from my old office to my present digs and I was feeling rather ambitious with the possibilities of a new year. I had resolved to join a health club and not create piles of paper and keep ahead of schedule.

Now it is January 4, 2010 and there are piles and there are things which are behind schedule and the year ahead does not look that different from the ones before. Surely a mixture of the good and the bad and every thing else in between. I will be fifty four by end of year and Kate will be 24 on Saturday. We won't discuss Cindy's age; I don't think she would want that placed up for discussion.

The skies outside my office are blue, with a thin haze of clouds. If I were not clear on what day it was, I would almost think it was Spring or Summer, but I hear the heater churning away in my office and I know that the temperature is in the twenties and that there is further a chance of frozen precipitation later in the week. That would be interesting. I wonder what Tex would think about a snowfall. I have had several dogs over the years and some like snow (Molly) and some do not (Georgia). It would be fun to see how he reacts to the sight of snow and sleet.

Well, on to more important things.

Blither, blither

The cold crispies of January are here. We should have lows in the teens for the next few days. New Years is over and it will be more difficult to convince Cindy and
Kate that there are football games on television which are worth watching. The inmates have taken over the asylum with NBA players bringing guns to lockerrooms and college football players at UT being arrested for gun possession.

If college is a place for children to take that turn into adulthood, then perhaps we need to wholesale reconsider who gets to go to college. What would happen if we just eliminated all the money which is used in our universities for athletics? I know that may seem odd from a former college football player, but really, this is getting way out of hand.

And it doesn't seem to get any better. At least Plexico Burrus only shot himself. On the other hand, I distinctly remember noticing all of the building that went on at UGA after the football team won the national championship. I know it may be a bit cynical, but it seemed that the university really got into the building program after the football team won the national championship and the basketball team made it to the final four. Of course, the economy was strong and the HOPE scholarship program was bringing more students to the public universities in Georgia, but that might just present a wash.

Well, on Thursday we get a new national champion, although we won't really know that for sure if TCU beats Boise State (the smurfs). That would leave three undefeated teams and as a pundit for ESPN said yesterday, "Exactly who is the best college football team in Texas?"

If Texas and TCU win their bowl games can we have a final game between them at Texas Stadium? Perhaps the proximity to Fort Worth would give TCU a better chance against the state university in Austin. It would be like the good old days of the forties, fifties and sixties when the schools of the Southwest Conference vied for supremacy in college football. They all had their moments. Perhaps this is the time for them to reform their league, although I do like Arkansas in the SEC. Just make a new league with only the Texas schools and all those Texans and former Texans can fight it out over who is the best in the "best" state. Let the football players in such football states as Ohio, Pennsylvania, Alabama, Georgia, Florida and California and everyone else, play for their own national championship, the "non-Texas championship."

I know some unreconstructed Texans who would probably go along with that.

The best game of the day

The best football game of the day, so far, was Northwestern and Auburn, which was won by Auburn in overtime, when Northwestern tried to score a touchdown after they lost their placekicker, who had missed three fieldgoals and an extra point. We were cheering for Northwestern, despite all of our friends with ties to Auburn, mainly because of the fact that Kate had really wanted to go to Northwestern and it has a better academic rep than Auburn. Nevertheless, I almost have a football hangover and there are still a few games tomorrow I want to see, in addition to the Falcons game on Sunday.

Football season is disintegrating down to all the teams I don't care about playing to find out who will be the champions. Basketball is in full swing, but won't matter until March, as we know. Then baseball season will begin and Spring will be here before you know it.