Lewis Grizzard Wednesday

Just Walk On By That Gas Station 
  
   
We could walk a lot more in this country. That’s what I said. We could actually walk more. 

If we walk more and drive our cars less, then maybe we could become less dependent on foreign oil so when some sheik of the burning sands decided to take over Lower Oilrichabia, we could ignore him. 

There wouldn’t be any need to send over our troops and planes, no reason to worry about chemical warfare, no reason to bug Henry Kissinger for interviews, no reason to bring up that nasty word “Armageddon,” no reason to have to pay $87.50 a gallon at the neighborhood Texaco, and no reason for Dan Quayle to say, “Please, George, don’t die on me now.” 

I used to walk all the time. Before I got a bicycle, I had to walk practically everywhere I couldn’t convince an adult to drive me. 

If I got thirsty and my mother said, “Walk, it’ll be good for you,” when I asked her to drive me to Cureton and Coal’s store for a big orange, I’d have to hoof it a half-mile to the store and back. 

I even walked all the way to Bobby Entrekin’s house one day. It was two miles both ways. He had invited me over to play cowboys and punk rockers. 

But it was a pleasant, enlightening experience. 

On the way, I saw a dead opossum in the road, I found a pointed rock that could have been an arrowhead, I kicked an empty pork and beans can at least a mile, and I had a lot of time to think about what I wanted to do when I grew up. 

I decided the next time an adult asked me about it, I would say, “I want to star in porno films” and see the look that would bring. 

But after I got my bike and then got old enough to drive, I gave up walking, as have many of us. 

Two of the three times I got married, I drove down the aisle. The other time, I took a cab. 

I probably would drive between rooms in my house, but my car won’t fit through the front door. 

We are slaves to our automobiles and the juice that makes them run and that gets us into harm’s way and allows oil companies to make us all feel like a bunch of dipsticks for what we have to pay for gasoline. 

Let’s all start walking more and driving less. We could start with me. 

The convenience store where I buy pork and beans and copies of the Enquirer is less than a half-mile away. I could walk there. 

I could walk to the Waffle House for my weekly cholesterol I.V. 

I could walk to the video store to rent “Naughty Female Attorneys” and “Debbi e Does Fargo, North Dakota,” neither of which I had a part in, incidentally. 

I could walk to a friend’s house to play cowboys and rap groups, and I could walk to my ex-girlfriend’s house when I forget I am an insensitive, arrogant, selfish jerk and need to be reminded. 

Join me, America. Let’s go for a walk and give Ahab the Arab and John D. Rockerperson a bad case of gas.

Lewis Grizzard Wednesday: A Georgia Lifespan

Life Span In Georgia 
    
    
A recent study showed that Georgia is near the bottom in a ranking of states according to expected life span of both men and women. 

Hawaii and Minnesota were the states where people live the longest. Hawaii, of course, features a warm tropical climate where people sit around drinking various exotic concoctions made with pineapple juice and watch lovely young girls in grass skirts move their sensuous bodies to ukulele music. 

The only drawback to living a long time in Hawaii is you get very old and your eyesight eventually goes, so you can no longer see the young girls move their bodies, but you still have to put up with all that ukulele music. 

As to Minnesota, nobody really lives a long time there. It’s so cold it just seems like it.  
 

Plenty to worry about 
 

Being a Georgian, I naturally was concerned upon discovering I can’t expect to live as long as people from other states. 

Georgia is a marvelously diverse state, with mountains and seashore and charming small towns, and, of course, bustling exciting Atlanta. 

So what makes us die earlier than other Americans? I put some thought to this question and came up with the following: 

ATLANTA TRAFFIC: Other cities have traffic jams. Atlanta has traffic wars. Sherman burned this city. The highway department is dismantling it, piece by piece. 

There is so much highway construction in Atlanta, motorists have to wear hard hats. Rather than face another day in Atlanta traffic, a lot of people simply die to avoid it.  
 

A South Georgia hazard 
 

GNATS: Gnats, tiny bugs, are the cause of a number of deaths in South Georgia each year. Some of these deaths have been attributed to swallowing a large number of gnats while talking or eating. Some also think the reason a lot of South Georgians disappear and are never heard from again is they are carried off by giant swarms of gnats and drowned in the Okefenokee Swamp. 

KUDZU: Nothing grows faster than a kudzu vine. It has been known to cover entire homes in Georgia where the families are asleep for the night. They are then trapped inside and can’t get to a convenience store, so they starve. Those who try to eat their way out of kudzu quickly have their innards entangled in the vine because no matter how much you chew it, the blamed stuff just keeps on growing.  
 

Football’s not safe either 
 

THE FALCONS: The Falcons lost a game to the Chicago Bears 36-0 and the Falcons coach blamed it on poor officiating. The Falcons have been big losers most every year they’ve been in Atlanta, and a man fell out of the stadium during a Falcons game once and was killed. I think he jumped after another Falcons’ holding penalty. 

LIVING IN BUCKHEAD: Buckhead is a tiny section of Atlanta where approximately 11 million white people under the age of 35 live. Each evening, all 11 million get into their Mercedes and go to trendy Buckhead bars and talk to one another. Here is what a Buckhead bar conversation usually sounds like: 

“I was like, `Wow!’ and he was like, `Really?’ “ 

These people might die from wearing their designer jeans too tight, becoming choked on Hearts of Palm while eating their salads and being trampled in a bar or by a polo pony. 

The study further revealed at what part of the year the most Georgians die. It’s when the state Legislature is in session.

Lewis Grizzard Wednesday: Taxes

There’s No Accounting About Taxes
   
   
I dropped by to see my accountant, Willard “The Shark” Houdini. He was in a most jocular mood. 

“I’m celebrating,” he said. 

“Let me guess,” I said. “You finally had a client to survive an IRS audit?” 

“Very funny,” he replied. “What I am celebrating is the new tax bill. Have some champagne?” 

I declined. Never accept an offer of champagne from an accountant wearing a sky blue leisure suit. That’s one of the first things you learn in Economics 101. 

“Pardon my ignorance, but I thought accountants were going to lose business because of the new tax bill, which was supposed to simplify how we do our taxes.” 

“Are you kidding me?” said Willard. “Have you ever known anything to come out of Washington that was simple?” 

He had a point. Election-year tax bill 

“Listen,” he went on, “this new tax deal is the best thing to happen to accountants and lawyers and financial consultants since the three- martini lunch. 

“Nobody has any idea how this new tax thing is going to work or how they are supposed to find the loopholes in it.” 

“But,” I interrupted, “I thought the new tax law was supposed to do away with loopholes.” 

“Do away with loopholes? That would be un-American.” 

I was confused. 

“Let me tell you what all this is really about,” said Willard. 

“In the first place, it’s an election year and nobody is going to vote against tax reform that allegedly will lower taxes. So here’s what’s going to happen: Real estate tax shelters, where rich people hid their money, will become obsolete, and the tax liability for people who make a lot of money will increase and big companies will owe a lot more taxes, too.” 

“That’s what I thought,” I said. 

“You don’t understand,” said Willard. The poor will pay 

“Rich people who can afford the fees will go to see their accountants or financial consultants and lawyers to see what they can do about lowering their tax liability and some smart cookies will find a way. 

“As far as the big companies are concerned, they simply will pass along whatever increase they have to pay to their customers.” 

“But aren’t the poor people getting a tax break?” I asked. 

“Sure,” said Willard, “but don’t forget this. Not only will prices for goods go up, but there will be a slowdown in construction of say, new apartments, so apartment owners will be able to go up on their rents and the poor will still get the shaft.” 

“Isn’t there something that can be done about such an inequity?” I asked. 

“Of course,” explained Willard. “This time next year there will have been so much griping and complaining and lobbying that the big companies will get their tax breaks back, and well-off individuals will be back in the tax shelter game. It’s just a matter of time.” 

“And the poor?” 

“They aren’t my problem,” said The Shark, guzzling another swig of champagne.

Lewis Grizzard Wednesday

Lewis wrote this one coming out of the 1991 season looking towards 1992. Oddly enough, he shared some of the same uneasiness about the upcoming season as many of us do now.

 

The Boys Of Summer Go Under The Dome 
   
   
Baseball season came to a rather rotten end for me in 1991. There I was in Minneapolis’s house of horrors, the Metrodome, covering the seventh game of the World Series between Atlanta’s Braves (with apologies to the Portland Oregonian) and the Minnesota Twins, a nickname a clever person said was insensitive to couples who couldn’t have children. 

Around the fifth inning, with no score in the game, the ribbon on my typewriter, which was manufactured sometime around the turn of the century, suddenly wouldn’t advance. I couldn’t make letters and words appear on the white paper in front of me. 

I fiddled with the problem for six more outs and was nearing a panic stage. What if I couldn’t figure out a way to free the ribbon? 

The game would end and I would have to write my column longhand and I hadn’t written anything in longhand since my last essay-type test in college. 

And who could I get to help me with the ribbon? Everybody else in the press box was writing on a Star Wars computer. Who would remember about typewriter ribbons? 

By the grace of God, I finally hit the right lever inside my typewriter and the ribbon started moving again. 

Then the Braves lost 1-0 because Lonnie Smith went brain dead on the base path. 

I finished my column and left the Metrodome. Outside, Twins fans were celebrating by doing such things as climbing onto the tops of buses. 

I had hired a car and driver to take me back to my hotel. 

Some kids had asked my driver for whom he was waiting. 

“Some guy from Atlanta,” he told them. 

When I arrived at the car the kids began heckling me. 

“We beat your [bad word]!” one screamed. 

“Go home, you redneck!” screamed another. 

Once I was inside the car and had locked my doors, they banged on the windows and roof and one of the Norse waifs pressed his nose and mouth on one of the windows. 

As I recall the incident now, I think he looked a little like Paul Tsongas. 

When I finally reached my hotel, shaken but unscathed, the bar was closed. 

I made a mental note that Minnesota calling itself the gopher state was an insult to gophers, and went to sleep. 

It is difficult for me to believe the 1992 baseball season is upon us so quickly. 

Wasn’t the nightmare in Minneapolis just yesterday? 

Indeed not. The 1992 Atlanta Braves, defending National League champions, are about to open their season, and many questions arise. 

I will attempt to answer some of them: 

Can the Braves repeat as National League champions? 

Sure. 

You really think so? 

If you really must know, I’m extremely concerned about Cincinnati. 

What can we expect of David Justice this season? 

A lot of pouting when things don’t go his way. 

Does the team have a drug problem? 

Well, they were drug all over the field during spring training but you can’t really go by that. 

Will the chop come back? 

Was Custer surprised at little Big Horn? 

Will Jane and Ted have a successful marriage? 

Who do I look like, Dear Abby? Let’s stick to baseball. 

What part of the Braves do you think will be the most improved? 

Their bank accounts. 

What would you like to see out of Lonnie Smith this season? 

An apology. 

If the Braves get to the World Series and have to play the Twins again, would you go back to Minneapolis? 

If I can take along a typewriter technician, and my own bat.

Lewis Grizzard Wednesday

Today, 19 years ago, the world lost a DGD in every sense of the word when Lewis passed away. 

We can thank of nothing more appropriate than this photo. 

 

Lewis Grizzard Wednesday: Non-working vending machines

Vending Machines That Won’t Work

I’ve been considering measures to take against vending machines that refuse to work.
I haven’t any concrete numbers, but I would guess that in the 30 or so years I’ve been feeding money into these callous contraptions, they actually have worked only about 50 percent of the time.

A few times when they don’t work, the machine doesn’t deliver the object I have selected, but it does return my money. I can deal with this.

What happens mostly, however, is the machine not only doesn’t give me my soft drink or candy or bag of peanuts, it also refuses to return my money.

I cannot deal with this. My eyes bulge out, my hands begin to shake, and I want to kill the machine.

To this point, I never have taken any drastic measures, however, because of my fear of the men in the white coats with their butterfly nets.

Another source of my frustration when it comes to vending machines is this: There never seems to be anybody around to scream at when a stupid machine has just ripped you off.

You would think, since the machine is in a hotel or a restaurant, you could go to some sort of assistant manager and say, in a loud voice so others could hear you, “Your blankety-blank machine has robbed me of my money!”

The problem is that when a vending machine refuses to work, it is impossible to find anybody who will take responsibility for it.

“We just lease the space to the vending company,” I have been told.

“You’ll have to talk to Mr. Wallakowski about that and he’s on vacation in Wyoming and will not be back until 1988,” is another cop-out.

It would be easier getting your money back from a television evangelist.

I decided, however, it is possible to get something back that is better than your money – revenge. Here is how I have planned to get back at the next vendin g machine that robs me:

1. I am going to kick the machine. I don’t mean a gentle kick. I mean, I’m going to rear back and kick the machine until there are large dents in it. I am going to kick it until it is in a terrible state of disrepair and then I am going to spit on it and call it ugly names.

2. After that, I am going to get violent. I am going to my car and get my lug wrench, and I am going to beat the machine some more. I want glass to fly. I want things inside the machine to make awful crunching sounds. I want nuts and bolts and screws to roll around on the floor. I want nearby dogs to whimper and small children to cry.

3. Then, I’m going to get really mad. I’m going to set the thing on fire. I am going to take off my clothes and dance naked around the smoldering machine, throwing my hands wildly into the air while giving out primal screams.

And after a few days of quiet rest in my padded cell, I will emerge a new man.

Lewis Grizzard Wednesday: Don’t touch my popcorn

Don’t Touch My Popcorn

NEW YORK – This is incredible. Here I am in the entertainment capital of the world, and I go into a movie theater on Broadway, the entertainment street of the world, and I can’t buy popcorn.

There was popcorn in the movie theater. There was just nobody behind the counter to sell it.

“I would like to speak to the manager,” I said to the man who had taken my ticket. “There’s nobody to sell the popcorn.”

“The manager’s not here,” said the man, “but I can tell you why there’s nobody to sell the popcorn. The popcorn girl didn’t show up for work.” All the kids have zits

“What’s the problem with her?” I asked. “She has a new zit?” (Ever notice that all kids who work for movie theaters have terrible acne.)

“No,” the ticket taker replied, “her boyfriend, Julio, lost his earring in a gang fight and she’s helping him look for it.”

“Why don’t you sell me some popcorn,” I asked.

“No way,” he answered. “The union won’t let me.”

I’m dying for a bag of popcorn and I have to run into Samuel Gompers.

The reason I go to movies in the first place is for the popcorn. A movie without popcorn is like a punkhead without an earring.

I always buy the largest container of popcorn available, so if the movie is long and boring, like Amadeus, I still have a good time eating all that popcorn.

I’m also very stingy with my popcorn. If I take a date to the movie, I always ask her politely, “Will you have some popcorn?”

Most women answer that by saying, ” No, I’ll just have some of yours.” Nobody can eat a little

I never fall for that. Nobody can eat just a little popcorn, so what happens when a woman doesn’t have her own is she starts eating yours, and pretty soon, it’s all gone.

I say, “Listen, you can have as much, or as little, popcorn as you want, but you must carry it to your seat in your own personal container. Try to get some of mine, and you’ll draw back a nub.”

I rarely have a second date with a woman I take to a movie, but a man must have his priorities in order.

The movie I saw sans popcorn was Rob Reiner’s “Stand By Me.”

It’s about four twelve-year-olds who go looking for a dead body, and nearly get eaten by a junkyard dog, run over by a train, drained dry of their blood by leeches, and sliced by bullies’ switchblades. It’s a comedy.

But that’s about all I remember. I was too busy thinking about popcorn to pay much attention to the movie.

As I was leaving the theater,the popcorn girl finally was showing up for work with Julio and his relocated earring in tow.

You’re both a disgrace to the good name of Orville Redenbacher,” I said, wishing on both the dreaded curse of large, red zits on the ends of their noses.

Harsh, perhaps, but popcorn is my life.

Lewis Grizzard Wednesday: Sitting Up With the Dead

We’ve got some audio of this Lewis classic of what happened back when folks had to ‘sit up with the dead,’ namely when Weyman C. Wannamaker Jr., A Great American had to sit up with his Uncle Cleve.

Moral of the story – don’t put Tech graduates in charge of anything important. 

 

This week’s Lewis: Curing the Common Cold

Due to some real-world goings on, including Corbin Dawg welcoming a new member to the family, times have been busy for us here at TGT. But we couldn’t let a week go by without a Lewis fix. 

Curing The Common Cold 
    
    
The medical community has been excited recently over the discovery that a drug called Interferon may be the long-awaited cure for the common cold. 

I think it is only fitting, however, we remember some of the methods that were used to battle colds in the past. 

There have been some marvelous remedies – even if most of them didn’t work – handed down through the years. 

My mother once told me that when she got a cold, her mother put a lot of stuff that smelled bad into a sack and then tied the sack around her neck. 

They did the same thing, incidentally, to captured prisoners in World War I to make them talk. 

I, too, have developed remedies for bad colds that I have had. And just in case Interferon falls on its runny nose, I thought I would mention a few of them here in case others may want to give my remedies a try . 

GINGER ALE: I am convinced ginger ale can heal the sick and raise the dead. There is something about its bubbliness and sweet taste that always seems to soothe my scratchy throat and achy head. 

Ginger ale will work even better if you can get somebody else to bring it to you while you are in the bed. If they will talk baby talk to you while they are serving you the ginger ale, this is even better. 

“Does my little tiger want some ginger ale for his coldy-woldy?” is the type phraseology I have in mind. 

SYMPATHY: I don’t care what anybody says, the more sympathy you get when you’ve got a cold, the faster you will recover. 

It probably won’t do you any good to call any of your friends looking for sympathy, so the best place to find it is to call your mother. 

If she says something like: “Does my little tiger have a coldy- wold?” you can expect to be up and around in no time. 

MOANING AND WHINING: These have long been two of my favorite co- remedies. What you do is get into the fetal position and moan or whine. 

A moan and a whine are different. When you moan you make low grunting sounds like “Oooooooh, my God.” When you whine, you make sounds like a poodle dog yapping for its dinner. I don’t know how to spell what a poodle dog sounds like when it is yapping for its dinner, but you get the idea. 

Even if nobody is around to hearing you moaning or whining, it will still help your cold. If somebody is there to hear, however, that’s a lot better. 

OLD BLACK & WHITE MOVIES: Nothing helps a cold more than lying in bed, drinking ginger ale, getting sympathy from somebody, while you are moaning or whining, and watching an old black and white movie on television. 

If Jimmy Stewart, Barbara Stanwyck, Alan Ladd, Victor Mature or Yvvone DeCarlo is in the movie you probablywill be well by the next morning. If Ronald Reagan is in the movie, however, you can be flat on your back for weeks. 

CHICKEN SOUP: This, of course, is the all-time homemade remedy for the common cold. 

I really don’t know if chicken soup works on a cold, but in the immortal words of my mother, who was kind enough to feed me chicken soup when I had a cold rather than tying smelly bags around my neck, “Have you ever heard a hen sneeze?” 

Think about it. 

Lewis Grizzard Wednesday: Flowers

I Always Hated Flowers MORELAND, Ga. – I always hated flowers when I was a kid. My mother and my grandmother and my Aunt Jessie loved flowers, but it was me they always wanted to go out and work in the dang things.I was a perfectly well-adjusted lad of 10 and I wanted to do perfectly well-adjusted things that lads of 10 want to do, such as play ball and make life miserable for my girl cousin. But, no. Either my mother or my grandmother or my Aunt Jessie would latch onto my ear at least once a day and send me out to hoe around in their flower gardens. “But real men don’t work in flowers,” I would protest. “Get out there in those flowers or we’ll serve you quiche for supper again,” they would volley back. (Actually, nobody in Moreland had ever heard of quiche back then – and probably few now – but it made a nice line, so I used it anyway. It’s called journalistic license.) Bribes didn’t work I soon moved from disliking flowers to hating them. I would go through the seed catalogs and draw mustaches on pictures of petunias. My friends gave me a lot of grief about all the time I had to spend working in flowers, too. “Wanna play ball?” one would ask. “Him, play ball?” another would scoff. “He’s got to work in his mommy’s flowers.” I tried everything to escape these botanical gardens of hell. I even tried to bribe my girl cousin into doing the work for me. I offered her my best marble, a Johnny Podres baseball card, and not to throw rocks at her anymore if she would do my flower work for me. “Why don’t you go sit on a cactus, begonia breath,” she countered. I remember telling my Aunt Jessie, who had by far the greenest thumb in the family, how much I hated flowers. “When I grow up, ” I said, “I’ll never look at a flower again.” She said I might change my mind one day. I figured she’d been sniffing too many honeysuckle blossoms. Back for a visit I visited home the other day to see the folks. My grandmother is gone now. My mother is too ill to dabble with her flowers anymore. Aunt Jessie, who has seen a lot of springs, is still out among her gardens every day, however. First thing I noticed when I drove up was my aunt’s yard. Her azaleas were spectacular, her dogwoods, both pink and white, were in full bloom, and everywhere there were breathtaking blankets of blue and pink thrift. My mother said people have been driving by from all over the county to witness the blossoming splendor of my Aunt Jessie’s yard. I considered swallowing my pride and visiting my aunt next door to tell her how beautiful her yard was and how wrong I had been about flowers. I didn’t though. My old hoe is still out in the garage somewhere, and one word out of me and my Aunt Jessie would have had me back at work faster than a Weedeater can take the fur off a cat’s tail. Flowers or no flowers, if it was hard work I had wanted, I wouldn’t have gotten this license to practice journalism in the first place.