Lewis Grizzard Wednesday: ‘Is Weyman Here With You?’

Seeing Weyman Would Be A Dream Come True

Monroe, Louisiana – Daniel Brantley is fifteen. He’s been blind since birth. I met him a year ago in his hometown of Shrevesport.

I made a public appearance there. After the show, Daniel’s mother brought him backstage.

I do not mean for any of this to be self-serving. It was just something about Daniel Brantley. He asked me questions about my work and my life I couldn’t answer.

He wanted to know where I was when I put this book or that book on tape. He wanted to know who the announcer was on the tape.

He asked me about names and places from columns I’d written years before and had completely forgotten about.

Then, he wanted to know about my boyhood friend and idol, Weyman C. Wannamaker Jr., a great American. “Mr. Lewis,” he began, always the polite one, “is Weyman C. Wannamaker Jr. here with you?”

I said, “I’m afraid not Daniel.”

“I really wanted to talk to him,” he said.

“I’ll say,” added his mother. “For his birthday last year he invited his friends to come dressed like they thought Weyman might look.”

I would have enjoyed seeing that. Weyman would have, too.

Where did Daniel get this interest in me and what appeared to be an interest in humor in general?

We cut a comedy album in Shreveport that night. We decided to dedicate it to him – “To Daniel Brantley, my No. 1 fan.”

I saw Daniel again here in Monroe. Because of Daniel and his remarkable zest for life and laughter despite his blindness, I did a thing here for the Louisiana Center for the Blind. I met another remarkable person, Joanne Wilson, who is the director of the center. She’s also the mother of five and has been blind herself since she was 16.

“What we do at the center,” she was telling me, “is try to change the image of blind people. The image we want to lose is that of the blind beggar on the street.

“The center teaches blind people self-esteem, work skills and independence. We prepare them to live better lives, to be worthwhile employees,” said Joanne Wilson.

“What we want to do is set them free.”

Set them free.

The deal I did here was to raise money for the center’s summer program for blind children. The center wasn’t going to be opened for the children this summer because it couldn’t afford it.

But a lot of kind people in Monroe came through for us. The reason I said “us,” is that they have named the summer program after me. I’ve never been so honored.

After the show, Daniel came backstage again and did his impressions of Presidents Nixon, Carter, Reagan and Bush for me – and damned fine impressions they were.

Prediction: This young man will be on a stage himself one of these days.

I saw Daniel again, and I met Roland and Andrea and Chico and many others, all blind children who want what the rest of us want – a fighting chance.

Before Daniel left he asked me, “Are there any good eye doctors over there at Emory Hospital in Atlanta where you had your heart surgery?”

Amazing.

“I don’t know,” I said to him. “Why do you ask?”

“Well,” he said, “maybe one day I can have an operation like you did on my eyes and be able to see.”

I’ll mention to Weyman to include Daniel’s dream in his prayers, too.

Lewis Grizzard Wednesday: McDonald’s

McDonald’s, Are You Listening?

For some years, I have wanted to discuss some harsh feelings that I have concerning McDonald’s, but I was always afraid nobody would agree with me. These people have sold zillions of hamburgers, so they must be doing something right.

But along comes nutritional expert/relief pitcher Goose Gossage, who works for the San Diego Padres baseball team, which is owned by the widow of Ray Kroc, the genius behind McDonald’s.

Gossage recently fell at odds with the Padres’ ownership and said not only did his bosses know absolutely nothing about baseball, but they – McDonald’s – also were “poisoning the world with their hamburgers.”

I don’t think McDonald’s is out to poison anybody. You might get a little heartburn every now and then from a greasy Quarter Pounder, but you can get that in any fast food joint. Several points to ponder

There are, however, several things that bug me about McDonald’s, and now that the Goose has had his say, I feel a bit more relaxed about discussing them. Consider these points:

Ever notice how every kid who works in McDonald’s looks the same? They wear those silly looking uniforms and those silly looking hats and they have those knowing smiles and you’ve got to figure they’re all going to grow up to be either chiropractors, automobile dealers or lawyers. Just what we need. More chiropractors, more automobile dealers and more lawyers.

McDonald’s foods all look like they were spit out of a computer somewhere.

I tried the new McDonald’s Garden Salad the other day. It came in a little plastic box with a little plastic top and there was a little plastic fork to use to eat the salad.

Then, there were little packages of bacon bits and croutons and the salad dressing came in what resembled a tube of toothpaste.

I felt like I was eating food I had ordered by mail.

Not only do McDonald’s personnel wear silly uniforms and hats, but Ronald McDonald is a disgrace to the clowning industry. He couldn’t hold Clarabell’s Seltzer bottle.

The thing I dislike most about McDonald’s is the suggestive selling technique of all those future chiropractors, automobile dealers and lawyers. Cup of coffee not enough

Ever go through the drive-in line at a McDonald’s and tell that faceless machine you want a cup of coffee?

The machine will inevitably respond by asking, “How would you like a Danish to go with your coffee?”

If I had wanted a Danish, I would have asked for a Danish.

McDonald’s will also try to push their french fries off on you.

“I’ll have the Quarter Pounder with cheese and a medium Coke.”

“How ’bout some fries with that?”

“How ’bout sticking an Egg McMuffin up. . .” Well, you see how pushy these little brats can be.

Despite all these complaints, however, I will still go into a McDonald’s occasionally just like everybody else. McDonald’s is efficient. McDonald’s is fast. McDonald’s is ingenious in developing new food products.

There were the Chicken McNuggets. Look for the Cooked McGoose any day.

Lewis Grizzard Wednesday: Lewis Holds A Press Conference

Leave Pulitzer Out Of This

I have called this press conference to announce I am not going to retire.

“Why not?”

I need a job.

“But there must be other reasons?”

I don’t have $46 million in the bank and I need the company health insurance are two that come to mind.

“But you have to sit around trying to think of column ideas all the time. That must really become a grind.”

Sometimes. But I don’t have to do any heavy lifting.

“But what about all the pressure?”

What pressure? If I mess up, nobody dies.

“But what if you write a lousy column? All those readers see it.”

They can always read “Dear Abby.”

“Aren’t you being a little callous here?”

Of course not. I’m just saying for 50 cents, how much insight do you expect to get? If Michael Jordan has a bad night, there’s always Scottie Pippen.

“But what about your health?”

Doctors say I can type all I want to.

“Let’s talk about burnout. You have been in the league for 16 years. “

That’s nothing. My mother taught first grade for over 30 years for a lot less than I’m making and I don’t have to convince 6-year-olds to sit down and shut up.

“But what about living in the spotlight? Your picture is in the paper. You’re a celebrity.”

So I’ll get a gun.

“You’re referring, of course, to Atlanta Falcon receiver Andre Rison, who says he carries a gun because of his celebrity status as a pro football player.”

If I were Andre Rison, I would carry two guns. He’s not only a celebrity, he also plays for the Falcons.

“But don’t people often harass you in public for what you write?”

Yo. I don’t mind that as long as they don’t challenge my manhood.

“Still, there must be other things you would like to accomplish. As they said about Michael Jordan, there’s a lot more to him than just being a great basketball player.”

Yeah, like the 46 million in the bank.

“You wouldn’t like to, say, go into teaching?”

I can’t convince my dog to sit down and shut up.

“How about television?”

Too many have already tried to out-Andy-Rooney Andy Rooney.

“What about acting? You did an episode of `Designing Women.’ “

In one scene I had to hug Delta Burke. Like I said, heavy lifting isn’t my bag.

“Some say Michael Jordan is retiring because he’s already won three league championships and several most valuable player awards. Is one of the reasons you’re not retiring the fact you’ve never won a Pulitzer?”

Winning the Pulitzer has never entered my mind.

“Oh, come on. The Pulitzer is the highest prize in journalism. Surely you must covet such a prestigious award.”

Awards are nice, but I didn’t get into the profession to win awards.

“What did you get into it for?”

To get mentioned favorably on the Rush Limbaugh radio show. That was enough for me.

“Michael Jordan retired in his prime. You’re telling us you don’t think you reached your prime yet?”

No. I just said I still need a steady job.

“That sounds like a cop out. How much more money do you need before you feel secure enough to retire?

Forty-five million and change.

“One more question. What primary goal do you hope to attain before you finally do retire?”

Outlast Beavis and Butt-Head.

“How long might that take?”

November 1996, if we’re lucky.

Lewis Grizzard Wednesday: Does Tech’s T Stand For Tacky?

There are not many good things to say about the North Avenue Trade School. One of them, however, is that the maggots have inspired some of Lewis Grizzard’s best columns.

Does Tech’s “T” stand for tacky?

Athens - This will end my crusade, at least until next September, to improve behavior at college football games.

After Georgia-Florida in Jacksonville, Florida players strutted in front of the Georgia fans at game’s end and rubbed in their victory by using obscene gestures.

After Georgia-Auburn, a member of the Georgia staff was hit in the head by a bottle thrown from the stands. So we come to Georgia-Georgia Tech here Saturday.

It was the Tech band that decided to show its collective hindparts.

At haltime, the Yellow Jacket musicians rolled out a Georgia Tech logo and covered the logo at midfield in Sanford Stadium that celebrates this, Georgia’s 100th year of football.

“The band,” said Tech drum major Dana Papp, “takes a lot of pride in our creativity.”

Creativity?

What creativity? All I saw was a group of juvenile horn blowers and drum beaters insulting the Georgia crowd.

It was like going to visit and neighbor’s house and deliberately spilling red wine on a white carpet.

The logo was painted on the stadium grass as a means of showing Georgia’s pride in its centennial season. Naturally, Georgia fans booed the Tech crowd.

“It made the people watch,” another member of the Tech band was quoted as saying. “Even if the response was negative, it was great.”

I thought people who make music in public did so to entertain. Whatever work went into the musical performance Saturday was completely wasted.

If those wusses had wanted to do something to make Georgia Tech look good in Sanford Stadium Saturday, they should have put on pads and gone out and stopped
Garrison Hearst. The Tech defense couldn’t, to the tune of a two-touchdown loss.

And speaking of Garrison Hearst, when he scored his third touchdown of the night, he struck the pose of the figure on the Heisman Trophy, given annually to college football’s most outstanding player.

I suppose he was trying to say, “I deserve the Heisman Trophy.”

I happen to agree, and I would like to see him win it. But I’d like to see him handle his acclaim as humbly and appreciatively as Georgia’s other Heisman winners, Frank Sinkwich and Herschel Walker.

And I happen to think Georgia coach Ray Goff would agree with me.

All this bragging, all this rubbing it in, all this show-boating, all this bottle throwing, comes from, I think, this “in your face” mentality in sports.

ESPN uses “in your face” to promote its sports coverage. “In your face” is just another way of saying, “Up yours.”

It breeds anger, and I don’t think anybody who sees it is impressed one bit.

Would the Tech band like to know what Georgia fans said to describe their little prank?

I heard “tacky” a lot, as well as “low class.”

Yeah, kids, you made quite an impression.

Lewis Grizzard Wednesday: Goodbye Old Soldiers

This past Sunday, Veterans Day was celebrated.

Personally, I’m proud of my late granddad for his service of our country in World War II. As each day goes by, those who fought for America then are becoming more and more scarce.

Here’s the hoping that their sacrifices are never forgotten.

Goodbye, Old Soldiers

It’s happened to me before, running into men who served with my late father in World War II.

This time I was in Greensboro, N. C., at a bookstore. I was signing copies of one of mine.

I noticed the old man at the first of the hour. He stood at the entrance of the store, looking at me.

After the hour, the signing was over. Meekly, the man walked to where I was sitting.

He had one of those faces that said, here’s somebody’s beloved grandfather. There was a lot of knowledge and caring in it.

Without another word, he said, “Your daddy was my first sergeant in World War II.”

I’ve studied my father’s record as a soldier closely and I know he was in France, then in Germany, and I know he later was sent back to Korea.

“He saved my life in Germany,” the man continued. “He saved a lot of lives, and they gave him a battlefield commission.”

According to a copy of the citation I have, the colonel had been killed and the unit was under heavy German fire. Sergeant Grizzard reorganized the company, running in the open where the bullets flew, and saved himself and his men from certain annihilation.

“If it weren’t for your daddy,” the man said, “I wouldn’t be here today.”

How do you respond to something like that? I certainly was proud of my father at that moment – to think this man had carried for half a century the memories of what my father did that day. And to think he would come to me after all this time. It was like he was trying to thank me for something my father did 50 years ago.

I think I managed a “Bless you,” or a “Thanks for looking me up.”

We shook hands and the old man walked away. My eyes teared as he did.

My parents’ generation, I sincerely believe, had more to bear than any other in this country’s history. Their lives were affected – and some were ruined – by World War I, the Great Depression, World War II and Korea, and some lost children in Vietnam. And, now, the last of them are fading into the shadows cast by the young they brought into this world.

A national magazine, noting the passing of the presidency to someone too young to have had the World War II experience, offered a spread titled, “Goodbye, Old Soldier.”

George Bush was the youngest fighter pilot in the Navy during World War II.

Now he has gone to his retirement, having been replaced by one with no military experience whatsoever, one whose dealings with the draft system still has a number of unanswered questions.

The Old Soldiers have moved out, and the Baby Boomers have moved in.

That is unsettling to me. The country’s leadership, save a few veteran members of Congress, is in the hands of those never tested by fire.

Few of my generation really know the meaning of sacrifice. What did we ever want for and couldn’t have? When have we ever been hungry? When did most of us ever have to run through a hail of bullets in a foreign land in order to save comrades? I never have and neither has Bill Clinton.

After the man in Greensboro had walked away, I realized I had made a mistake by not sitting with him and asking him to tell me what happened that day in Germany. I would have liked to have known about it from a survivor, not from some document.

But you know how it is. We’re all in a hurry. We just don’t know where it is we’re hurrying to.

Goodbye, Old Soldiers, and thank you.

You are the very best of us.

Lewis Grizzard Wednesday: Coach Eaves

Though readers in West Georgia may disagree, the Auburn rivalry is a friendly rivalry many senses. When looking at Georgia and Auburn, they may as well be two siblings who have fought over stuff for years. Both have strong roots within agriculture, fan bases have similar mindsets and some of our biggest names are intertwined with those on The Plains. The noticeable ones of course, are Coaches Dooley and Dye. Why in the heck Dye’s name is on Auburn’s stadium and Dooley’s not in Athens is beyond deplorable, but that is a fight for another time.

One can argue that without Joel Eaves, who came to UGA from Auburn in 1963, UGA would not be where it is today as an athletic department.

 

UGA Glory Began With Coach Eaves

You look back over your life and you usually see a network of individuals who help you get to wherever it is you happen to be.

There was an English teacher who encouraged my writing. There was another teacher who taught me to type. God knows how hard it would have been to have had to write it all down in longhand.

There was a college dean who taught me to love and honor my profession. And this person got me my first job, and that person saw fit to hire me.

Then there was Joel Eaves. He came close to being the person who changed the direction. He almost made me a PR man.

Coach Eaves. He was tall and silver-haired with a voice so low and strong, it used to make me think, “That’s probably what God sounds like.”

Joel Eaves came from Auburn in 1963 to take over as athletic director at the University of Georgia when the department was in near shambles.

There was that mess about an alleged fix of a football game by Georgia’s Wallace Butts and Alabama’s Bear Bryant. Georgia was averaging three wins a football season and half-empty stadiums in those days.

But enter Joel Eaves, who shocked the state by bringing in a 30-year- old kid named Vince Dooley to be the new head football coach. Enter Joel Eaves, who could squeeze the green out of a dollar bill and who made the athletic department’s financial situation sound once more.

I first met him in 1965. I was a 19-year-old kid sportswriter working for the Daily News – Athens’s new morning newspaper.

I trembled the first time I had to interview him. Walking into his office in the Georgia Coliseum was like walking into an office with the name of Oval.

Perhaps Coach Eaves sensed my anxiety. He was patient with me, answering each of my questions, most of which, I am sure, were as sophomoric as I was at the time.

I would interview him often during my last three years at Georgia. He fed me an occasional scoop, invited my young bride and me on a couple of bowl trips and always treated me with respect, something athletic directors are not known for doing when it comes to sportswriters.

My senior year came along. In early spring Coach Eaves summoned me to his office and offered me the job of assistant sports information director at Georgia. He was willing to pay me $7,200 a year.

I wanted to take it. I wanted to work for Joel Eaves and I wanted to work for Georgia. My bride wanted me to take it. She enjoyed the bowl trips.

But Jim Minter, who was executive sports editor of The Atlanta Journal at the time, found me in the Georgia baseball press box a few days later and offered me $160 a week – all the money on Earth – to come to Atlanta and continue as a sportswriter. I took the offer.

Coach Eaves said, “If you ever decide you made the wrong choice, give me a call.”

The man died last week. A friend in Athens said, “He just wore out.”

Coach Eaves had been in a nursing home.

There’s been a lot of athletic glory at Georgia the past 25-plus years, and let us all remind ourselves it was Joel Eaves who laid the foundation.

His funeral was at 1 o’clock Saturday. For a reason. Georgia kicks off at 1 o’clock Saturdays.

Coach Eaves lived 77 good years, and he gave Georgia a large portion of them. We will be forevermore in his debt.

Lewis Grizzard Wednesday: Those Hard Times

Those Hard Times

Mama used to talk about hard times a lot. I didn’t pay much attention back then.

I had plenty to eat, a nice warm bed and a dog who came when I called him.

But I can remember. I can remember Mama watching me open my Christmas gifts as a child.

I didn’t get the air rifle or the expensive electric train I wanted one Christmas. Daddy was gone and Mama taught in a Georgia public school system in the ’50s. That’s why I didn’t get the air rifle or the expensive electric train I wanted.

I seem to remember what I got instead was a pair of skates and some underwear. I probably showed my disappointment.

Mama noticed and said, “Son, all we used to have when I was growing up was hard-candy Christmases.”

Mama grew up on a family budget that was based on what a few acres of red clay could produce. What the family didn’t eat, they sold or traded for other needs. A dozen fresh yard eggs for a bucket of syrup.

“All we got for Christmas,” Mama said, “was a few pieces of hard candy. Daddy just didn’t have the money for anything more.”

I can remember her talking with the other adults about the Great Depression, an Excedrin recession.

“Times were hard, but I guess we were lucky,” Mama would say. “We didn’t have any money, but we had some chickens and a cow, and Daddy was still able to grow a few things. At least we didn’t go hungry like a lot of other folks.”

Hard times. They come and they go. These are really the hardest times most of the people alive in this country today have ever known. My generation, the baby boomers, haven’t known any hard times before. I was able to pay for some of my college, but Mama saved shoe boxes full of ones and fives to help me get started.

Opportunities abounded when I graduated. I went to work for The Atlanta Journal for $150 a week in 1968, when I was 21. My mother made $120 a month teaching first grade in Senoia, Ga., in 1953.

Since I was 15, I’ve never been out of work, except when I chose to be out of work. I decided to devote all my energy to my tennis game back in 1974, so I quit my job at the Journal. No problem. I’d saved a few shekels and my wife worked for the apartment complex in which we lived. We got free rent. My forehand volley improved dramatically.

When I decided I’d never wind up on center court at Forest Hills, I went back to work. I had no problem finding another job. I got one at the Chicago Sun-Times in 1975, making $28,000 a year.

And I’m still one of the lucky ones. I’ve still got a job today. A lot of other people don’t, of course. Unemployment rates are up, to be sure, but we still can’t compare these hard times to those of our parents and grandparents.

We’re in a hole, but not nearly as deep a one as the country and its citizens have been in before.

What I’m wondering is, are we as strong and determined as our forebears were? They held up and held on and went through hell to get out of the deep well they were in.

Can we stick it out and remove ourselves from a comparative pothole?

Perhaps it’s easy for me to ask such questions. General Motors hasn’t laid me off. My employer hasn’t gone out of business.

But all of us have an example that was set by those who gave us life and reared us.

They blamed the politicians just like we’re doing. Damn Hoover. Do- nothing Bush.

They hurt. They cried. They despaired.

But they survived. And we can too.

It’s in our blood.

Lewis Grizzard Wednesday: Soccer Is Boring

I don’t want to sound flippant about all those people getting killed in European soccer riots, but I honestly think I know part of the reason for the violence that surrounds the sport in other parts of the world.

It’s because soccer is boring to watch. If I had to watch a soccer match or a bowling match, I would take bowling every time.

At least in bowling, you always can laugh at those silly bowling shirts and shoes the bowlers wear. The only thing uglier than a bowling shoe is Gloria Vanderbilt.

Nothing ever happens in one soccer game to set it apart from another. The two teams run up and down the field for a couple of hours and then maybe – just maybe – one of the teams will score a goal.

I can give you the soccer scores for an entire season right here. They will be 0-0, 1-0 or 1-1 most of the time, and occasionally there will be a real slugfest that ends 2-1.

What happens in Europe is, all those people get together for a soccer match and they start drinking and they become bored with what’s happening on the field, so they riot.
Bet, don’t riot
Imagine a riot breaking out in the middle of a close American football game. There is too much head-knocking on the field for such a thing to take place, and since most of the people in the stands have a bet down on the game, they aren’t going to get involved in a fight because they might have a week’s salary wagered on the outcome.

I’ve never seen a soccer match in person. I avoid soccer matches with the same intensity that I avoid the dentist.

However, I did see a match on television once. I was in London and I turned on the set in my hotel room and the BBC was televising the English soccer version of the Super Bowl.

You don’t have a lot of choices when it comes to watching the telly in London, so, fool that I was, I sat there and watched the soccer match.
The crowd sang
The two teams kicked the ball up and down the field for an entire afternoon, but nobody could get the ball past the goalkeepers and the match ended 0-0.

No problem. They decided to try again in a couple of days. I found myself in front of the television in my hotel room watching the second stanza of this yawner. I had to see if anybody would ever score.

Late in the second match, somebody kicked the ball and it hit a player in the back of his head and accidentally went into the goal. Team A took the championship 1-0. I’ve seen more excitement at a K mart tire sale.

What the crowds at the two matches did most is sing. There was nothing to watch on the field, so they sang – which, of course, is better than rioting, but some of the best fights I’ve ever seen started with a bunch of drunks trying to sing at a bar.

What comes off the top of my head as a means of making soccer more exciting is to give the players baseball bats and if the match happens to end in a tie, then let the respective goalies fight it out in a bare knuckles tie-breaker.

As we have proved with many of our popular American sports, it is better to have the violence on the field than in the bleachers.

Lewis Grizzard Wednesday

Today’s Screen Heroes

One of the major problems facing the American male today is his inability to emulate even in the slightest the current movie hero.

The previous generation of men had no problems doing George Raft, Jimmy Cagney, Cary Grant, or even Bogie, where all you had to do was dangle a cigarette from your mouth and react to most everything with a general unpleasantness.

And if you could swagger and win an occasional fistfight you even could remind yourself of John Wayne.

But not anymore. The box office biggies these days are men such as Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone, who make movies in which they single-handedly wipe out entire civilizations.

Stallone makes movies by the number. There were Rocky No. 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. and “First Blood Part 2,” or was it “First Part, Blood 2″? I forget. Bogie did “The African Queen.”

Schwarzenegger does things like “Conan the Barbarian” and “Commando.” Cary Grant did “Father Goose,” for crying out loud. A tad of aggression

I haven’t seen all these macho men movies, but I did happen to catch Schwarzenegger in “Commando” on cable the other evening. Usually, I spend my evenings in quiet meditation, but this particular evening I was feeling a bit aggressive and roguish so I clicked around the dial of my television until I found something to fit my mood.

Right away, I discovered I don’t eat my red meat out of the same trough as Schwarzenegger.

I won’t bore you with the plot of “Commando,” if, indeed, there was one, but among other things our muscular hero Arnold did in the movie were:

Jump off the landing gear of a jet as it took off at 200 miles an hour. He wasn’t scratched.

Face roughly 600 guerrillas firing machine guns at him, never so much as getting winged.

Kill the 600 guerrillas firing machine guns at him, not to mention a fellow airline passenger and several scumbags who had kidnapped his daughter, one of whom he dropped off a cliff, and two others he managed to impale. I’m a complete zero

I hadn’t seen that caliber of impaling since the quiz show “Jousting for Dollars” went off the air.

The point is, American males always have attempted to take on at least some of the characteristics of our screen heros, but who can even come close to these brutish dynamos?

I never could jump off the landing gear of an airplane. The only brave thing I ever did on an airplane was attempt to go to the restroom before the captain turned off the fasten-seat-belt sign. On the way, however, a flight attendant tripped me and slam-dunked me back into my seat. And when I had to collect bugs for my 10th-grade biology class, I had to get my mother to stick the pins in them so they would stay in order in my cigar box. As an impaler, I’m a complete zero.

In fact, the only thing I ever did that was really mega-macho was once I trie d to buy a pair of undershorts like Jim Palmer models.

The sales girl snickered and showed me instead a pair of boxer shorts with owls on them, the kind Cary Grant probably wore in “Father Goose.”

Lewis Grizzard Wednesday: A man, his dog and his truck

A Man, His Dog, And His Truck

A few years ago I went out and bought myself one of those sexy convertible imports. Maybe it was a crisis of middle life.

Maybe I thought owning such an automobile would take away notice of the creeping years. A guy driving a sexy convertible import – a flashy red one – is conquering hills in a metallic blur, not going over them into the land of arthritis and prunes on the other side.

The trouble was the car never quite fit me. Perfume on a hog, that sort of thing.

I looked and felt out of place in it. People would see me in it and look at me as if to say, “Look at that old man driving his kid’s car.”

Or they would say, “Look at that person having a middle-age crisis. Why doesn’t he get a Lincoln and join the AARP?”

I was terribly fastidious about the car as well. I wouldn’t even allow my dog Catfish, the black Lab, to ride in it.

I was afraid he would drool on the expensive leather seats or leave a hair. He would look at me as if to say, “You love that stupid car more than you do me.”

One morning I went out and found a flat tire on my sexy convertible import. It looked like something had gnawed the air out of it.
Coming to my senses
The good news here is I no longer have that car. I traded it. I did what very few people have ever done.

I traded my flashy red, sexy convertible import for a truck.

I think it was a sign I am over any crisis of middle age and that I am aging gracefully and that I am a mature individual.

I had a truck once before. The speedometer went out when it had 120,000 on it. I drove it another two years before it finally rolled over on its back one day and passed away.

I didn’t worry about Catfish drooling or getting hair in that truck. That’s what trucks are for.

But instead of getting another truck, I went for the import, and it has taken me this long to come to my senses.

The guy made me a pretty good deal. I did find out that 14 minutes after you purchase a sexy convertible import, it loses about 60 percent of its value.

“This is all this car is worth now?” I asked when told what it would bring. “My dog never set foot in it.”

The guy showed me the book that lists what cars are worth.

“Best I can do,” he said, jingling the change in his pocket. When a car dealer starts jingling the change in his pocket, he knows he’s got you.
A contented Catfish
But it’s a pretty truck. I got red again. It’s got everything on it but a CD player, which I didn’t want anyway because I don’t own any CDs and, even if I did, the CD player probably would break or my CDs would become the first in history to rot.

But I’ve got a tape deck, a radio, air conditioning, power windows and locks and there’s a luggage rack on top. Catfish gnaws one tire on my new truck and he rides up there.

I went on my first drive. For the first time in years, I felt comfortable on the road again. I felt like an adult, not some 24-year-old with the top down, the wind blowing through his flowing locks as he cruises for girls who pop their gum and use “goes” in place of “says.”

My new truck is American-made, too. I feel a lot better about that. And it will save on gas, which will help me pay my fair share of taxes after getting so filthy rich during the Reagan and Bush years.

I took Catfish on my first ride in the new truck. He sat right up there in the front seat and drooled and shed happily away.

But we were a team again. A man, a dog, and a truck. All is right with my world.

Nobody can tax that. Can they?