Lewis Grizzard Wednesday: A fan of the ’93 Phillies

October, 1993 

I’m just as much a Braves fan as the next Atlanta chop-chop yahoo, but I’ve got to admit I’ve come to like the Philadelphia Phillies, too.

You know why? Because the prissy pots don’t.

They quoted this woman at a hair salon in the Atlanta papers recently. She was asked what she thought of the Phillies after watching the first two games of the National League Championship Series.

She said, “The tobacco chewing was pretty gross … I’m an environmentalist and so I just can’t understand the tobacco in terms of putting it into your body. There was also some pretty bad hair out there.”

Go shampoo a goat and leave the Phillies to look as they damn well please.

You hit something white with a stick and then you run and slide around in the dirt. You sweat and you spit and you curse.

In “A League of Their Own” Tom Hanks was trying to explain to one of his female baseball players about the game. She was crying.

“There’s no crying in baseball,” he said.

Of course there isn’t. There’s yelling and screaming and belching and John Kruk of the Phillies reminds me of the kind of guy who probably still thinks it’s funny to make escaping gas sounds by cupping his palm under his armpit.

That is still funny. It’s funnier than “Married … With Children.”

What to do with the prissy pots?

“I’m an environmentalist, so I just can’t understand the tobacco in terms of putting it in your body.”

That’s why they invented chewing tobacco, lady, so baseball players could spit in color. Take Len Dykstra of the Phillies.

Here’s a guy who would put up with Somalia for about as long as he would a hanging curveball. Len Dykstra is trying to win ball games, not get a GQ cover. He doesn’t care if tobacco juice dribbles out of the side of his mouth and onto his uniform. He wants it to do that. He wants to gross you out. It’s what he lives for.

Back to John Kruk. Ol’ John Kruk from West (by-God) Virginia. You look at this guy and you think outdoor plumbing.

He gets a raise, he buys a new satellite dish to put outside the trailer, so he can get all the stations when he isn’t making sounds with

his armpit. There was a quote from him once in Sports Illustrated. A woman saw him smoking a cigarette in the dugout during a spring training game.

She said something like, “Aren’t you ashamed? A professional athlete smoking.”

He responded, “I ain’t a professional athlete. I’m a baseball player.” The man’s a p-l-a-y-e-r.

I like that crazy relief pitcher, too. Mitch Williams. He’d give Queen Elizabeth a hotfoot. Hair? He styles with Kruk’s cigarette lighter.

I’m not on the sports pages anymore, so I can be a homer and root for the Braves.

But I would take the Phillies in a fight, a riot, a war. Send those guys to Somalia.

The only thing wrong with the Phillies is their name. Calling that crowd Phillies is like calling the corner barbershop, Christophe’s.

Call ’em the Muds or the Bloods. Or the Nightmare from the North.

I just happen to like my baseball teams a little on the trashy side.

Lewis Grizzard Wednesday

Lewis had many loves, one of which was tormenting our inferiors at the North Avenue Trade School. 

Georgia Tech Goliath Shown the Truth

 I almost got into a fight in the men’s room at The Omni Saturday night after Georgia’s resounding basketball victory over Georgia Tech.

So maybe I made a couple of comments like, “We beat them in football, we beat them in basketball. All they’ve got left to talk about are academics.”

Tech had beaten us three straight years and, quite frankly, those of us on the Georgia side grow a bit weary of reading about the supposed greatness of the Atlantic Coast Conference, of which Tech is a member.

If you read the paper and listen to the Tech fans, you’d think the  Jackets go to the Final Four every year.

The truth is, they’ve never achieved such loft, but Georgia has.

Back to the near fight.

I was in the restroom in The Omni. I was actually in the process of doing one of those things you do in a restroom when the guy behind me, who was wearing a yellow sweater, began to make disparaging remarks about me.

He said, “You rotten, no-good, gravy-sucking, four-eyed son-of-a-blah, blah, blah.”

After completing what I had come into the restroom to do, I turned around and said, “Listen you yellow-bellied, sap-sucking, slide rule-carrying, pimple-faced, blah, blah, blah, you have no business talking to me that way.”

The guy was big, too. He must have been 6 feet 4 inches, 220. A crowd had gathered by this time. I had no choice but to stand in. To have backed down, even to a guy who was 6 feet 6 inches, 260, would have been a sign of weakness.

I took my glasses off and slung them to the floor and said, “I’m 42 years old, been married three times, had two heart surgeries, haven’t exercised in 10 years, eat too many foods that contain cholesterol, still insist on white bread, have sticks for arms and legs, lose every time I play gin rummy, can’t putt and read a lot, but if you want to go at it, here I stand.”

The guy, who had to stand 6 feet 8 inches and 280 pounds, and probably was a member of a motorcycle gang and had a knife on his person, began to back down.

“I’m really sorry about making those quite disparaging remarks about you,” he said.

“That’s not good enough,” I countered. “I want you to repeat after me: ‘Georgia has kicked our butts in both football and basketball, and it is obvious that Georgia people are better human beings than Tech people.’”

He said, “Georgia has kicked our butts in both football and basketball, and it is obvious that Georgia people are better human beings than Tech people.”

“Now,” I said, “I want you to go from this place in shame. I want you to hurt from the knowledge that the great Atlantic Coast Conference is nothing but a gathering of bed-wetting communists and the University of Georgia is a pinnacle of learning and athletic greatness.”

The guy turned and walked out of the restroom, beaten to a verbal pulp.

“How big was he?” asked my lovely female companion as I reluctantly reconstructed the story.

“Had to be 6 feet 10 inches and weight 290,” I said.

She kissed me gently on the cheek and said, “Let’s go home, Rocky.”

It was one helluva night.

Lewis Grizzard Wednesday: Raise Those Chicken Fingers

Had it not been for the Braves winning the National League West race over the weekend, the news out of Athens Saturday night would have been even more startling.  Georgia beats Clemson in football. You believe that? The Braves winning the West was a miracle. Georgia beating Clemson also had to be divinely structured.

It couldn’t happen. But it did. I thank you, God. Ray Goff thanks you. Everybody whose allegiance is colored red and black thanks you. We never needed one any worse.

As the Clemson revelers headed up Field Street to Sanford Stadium an hour before the evening kickoff, you could sense the possibility of losing had not entered their minds.

A fat boy, wearing shorts and an absolutely filthy T-shirt and an orange hat, shouted to Georgia tailgaters, “Y’all about to get whooped and whooped bad.”

A few shouted retorts. I wondered aloud if fat boy could even spell “Clemson.”

“You can’t spell it, either, ” a companion said to me. “It’s not ‘Clemson.’ It’s ‘Clemmons.’”

I’d forgotten.  Clemmons College. That’s what we called ‘em before they started beating our brains out.

God, last year in Death Valley. The heat was nearly unbearable. People fainted. And I was stuck, as are all Georgia fans when they venture to Auburn-with-a-lake, deep in the end zone.

Didn’t matter. I didn’t want to see what was happening on the field, anyway. It was Clemmons 94 and us totally embarrassed.

You don’t want to be a Georgia fan losing to the Tigers at home.  Several years ago a friend was walking out of the Clemson stadium when an orange-clad held a chicken bone in front of him and said, “Come here, Dawg, and get your bone.”

My friend, known as Rocky afterwards, let the guy have one upside the head. How we got home alive, I’ll never know.

Last year they were actually laughing at us. A car sped past my party as we huddled together after the loss and the driver shouted, “Them Dawgs are a joke!”

I pulled out my .45 and shot the car full of holes. No, I didn’t. I just sank deeper in my sorrows.

So Saturday night was payback. A Tech fan had said to me earlier in the week, “It’s going to be a long ride home for y’all Saturday night.”

Turns out, it was Tech that took the long ride home. Tech is 2-3. Georgia is 4-1. You believe that?

I always tailgate with B.A. and Nancy. Chicken and Nancy’s marvelous deviled eggs.

At each home game this year, we’ve had chicken fingers. B.A. has gone into the chicken finger business in a place called Oscar’s on Baxter. He’s got chicken fingers, big burgers and biscuits from scratch.

“It’s the chicken fingers, ” he said to me after the Saturday night victory.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“We’re 4-0 at home. My chicken fingers are undefeated.”

And so they are.

We remained at our tailgating site and welcomed Sunday morning. The Clemmons fans had gone quietly into the night. I wanted to tell fat boy to wear a clean shirt next time.

Now Ole Miss. B.A. can’t make the trip to Oxford, but I’ll be there.

We’re trying to figure out how to fax chicken fingers.

Lewis Grizzard Wednesday: Talking The Russian Code

The Russians Out in the Code

I didn’t find it all that newsworthy to learn that the Russian and American governments often used bugging devices to find out what one another is doing/and or saying.

I always had taken this as a given. Wasn’t the first thing Bill Cosby and Robert Culp did when they checked into a hotel room in “I Spy” was to search out the bugging devices, which always were located in the flowerpot? I also figure both U.S. and Soviet operatives are smart enough to know how to say things in code when they are being listened to by the other side.

My stepbrother, Ludlow Porch of WSB/Radio in Atlanta, who happens to be an ex-marine and quite the patriot, was along with me on a trip to the Soviet Union a couple of years ago and we often carried on sensitive conversations in our respective hotel rooms.

We certainly took for granted our rooms were bugged, especially after one KGB “maid” asked him, “How are you enjoying your stay in Soviet Union?”

Before Ludlow could answer, she said, “Please speak directly into flowerpot.”

After that Ludlow and I devised a brilliant code to use each time we knew somebody out there was listening.

Now that we are both safely out of the country and plan never to go back, here is one of our typical conversations while in the Soviet Union, followed by the translation:

Ludlow: “‘Rosebud’ in the third race at Pimlico.”

(I’m so tired of Russian food, I could eat a horse.)

Me: “This little piggy went to market.”

(Before I left home, I went by the Piggly Wiggly supermarket and picked up a couple of cans of pork and beans for the trip. Want some?”

Ludlow: “Is a bear Catholic?”

(In the name of God, yes.)

Ludlow (again): “Are you going to watch “Sanford and Son?”

(Are you as sick as I am of looking at all that junk in Russian museums?)

Me: “Roger. The big polar bear walks late.”

(Dang right. I’m going over to a bar tonight at a hotel where they are supposed to have ice.)

Ludlow: “Is the new Sears Roebuck catalog in yet?”

(You got any toilet paper left in your room?)

Me: “Pass the Charmin.”

(A little, but I’m in big trouble when that’s gone.)

Ludlow: “Does Bonzo have the key?”

(Do you think President Reagan is correct in thinking these people are a major threat to the security of our nation?)

Me: “A flush beat a straight.”

(Are you kidding me? A country that still can’t master the flush toilet couldn’t hit its own foot with a guided missile.)

Ludlow: “Shoot low, boys, they’re ridin’ Shetland ponies.”

(Have you noticed how squatty-looking all the Russian women are?)

Me: “The elephants are marching.”

(They all have big fat ankles, too.)

Ludlow: “When the bird of paradise flies away, Santa’s belly will roll like jelly.”

(When we finally blow this place, I’m going to be one happy fat man.)

Me: “Hey, Mabel, Black Label.”

(I’ll drink to that.)

Ludlow: “Now’s the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country.”

(Isn’t it a little silly for two grown men to be sitting here talking like this?)

Me: “The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy brown dog.”

(You can’t be too careful when the security of your country is involved.)

Ludlow: “Loose lips can sink ships, Jarhead.”

(That’s the first thing they taught us at boot camp in Parris Island.)

Lewis Grizzard Wednesday: Delta Is Ready When You Are

If y’all don’t like Dixie, Delta is ready

I don’t care what they do to the Georgia state flag. They can put a big peach on the thing as far as I’m concerned. They can put Deion Sanders’ smiling face on it.

And let it be known that the opponents of the flag, with its reminiscence of the Confederate banner, will bring down that flag.

One way or the other, color it red, white, blue and gone. It’s politically incorrect and all the things that are deemed such have no future in this country.

We elected Hillary Rodham Clinton and the ban on the gays in the military will be lifted. It’s a done deal. Like it or not, the Georgia state flag has no chance either.

The issue on my mind is white Southerners like myself.

They don’t like us. They don’t trust us. They want to tell us why we’re wrong. They want to tell us how we should change.

They is practically every s.o.b. who isn’t one of us.

I read a piece on the op-ed page of the Constitution written by somebody who in the jargon of my past “ain’t from around here.”

He wrote white Southerners are always looking back and that we should look forward. He said that about me.

I’m looking back? I live in one of the most progressive cities in the world. We built a subway to make Yankees feel at home.
And I live in a region the rest of the country can’t wait to move to.

A friend, also a native Southerner, who shares my anger about the constant belittling of our kind and our place in this world, put it this way: “Nobody is going into an Atlanta bar tonight celebrating because they’ve just been transferred to New Jersey.”

Damn straight.

I was having lunch at an Atlanta golf club recently. I was talking with friends.

A man sitting at another table heard me speaking and asked, “Where are you all from?” He was mocking me. He was mocking my Southern accent. He was sitting in Atlanta, Ga., and was making fun of the way I speak.

He was from Toledo. He had been transferred to Atlanta. If I hadn’t have been 46 years old, skinny and a basic coward with a bad heart, I’d have punched him. I did, however, give him a severe verbal dressing down.

I was in my doctor’s office in Atlanta. One of the women who works there, a transplanted Northerner, asked how I
pronounced the world “siren.”

I said I pronounced it “si-reen.” I was half kidding, but that is the way I heard the word pronounced when I was a child.

The woman laughed and said, “You Southerners really crack me up. You have a language all your own.”

Yeah we do. If you don’t like it, go back home and stick your head in a snow bank.

They want to tell us how to speak, how to live, what to eat, what to think and they also want to tell us how they used to do it
back in Buffalo.

Buffalo? What was the score? A hundred and ten to Zip.

The man writing on the op-ed page was writing about that bumper sticker that shows the old Confederate soldier and he’s saying, “FERGIT HELL!” I don’t go around sulking about the fact the South lost the Civil War. But I am aware that once upon a long time ago, a group of Americans saw fit to rebel against what they thought was an overbearing federal government. There is no record anywhere that indicates anybody in my family living in 1861 owned slaves. As a matter of fact, I come from a long line of sharecroppers, horse thieves and used car dealers. But a few of them fought anyway — not to keep their slaves, because they didn’t have any. I guess they simply thought it was the right thing to do at the time.

Whatever the reason, there was a citizenry that once saw fit to fight and die and I come from all that, and I look at those people as brave and gallant, and a frightful force until their hearts and their lands were burnt away.

I will never turn my back on that heritage.

But know this: I’m a white man and I’m a Southerner. And I’m sick of being told what is wrong with me from outside critics, and I’m tired of being stereotyped as a refugee from “God’s Little Acre.”

If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times, and I’ll probably have to say it a thousand times again.

Delta may be hurting financially, but it’s still ready to take you back to Toledo when you are ready to go.

Lewis Grizzard Wednesday: From The Bag Of Treks

Storing My Bags Of Treks

I’m finally home after a month on the road pushing a book. Some notes and observations on some places I went and some people I met:

– San Francisco: I asked a woman here what it’s like to be single in a city with a huge population of gay males.

“It’s terrible,” she answered. “The best men you meet are married, which leaves gays and unmarried straights. Obviously gays are out and the straight guys are so arrogant they think they’re God’s gift to women.”

After a moment of thought, the woman added, “In San Francisco, I guess they are.”

– Dallas: After several weeks of eating airplane food I was ready for some home cooking. I found it in a Dallas restaurant called The Mecca. I had country fried steak, fresh vegetables and homemade coconut pie. I asked the cook to marry me. Baton Rouge not too busy

Baton Rouge: A cab driver picked me up at my hotel. I said I wanted to be dropped off at a restaurant and then be picked up again an hour later and taken to the airport.

The driver said, “I’ll just wait for you in the parking lot of the restaurant.”

“Won’t that be expensive?” I asked.

“I won’t run the meter,” the driver replied. “When you drive a cab in Baton Rouge, you get used to waiting and not making any money.”

– Charlotte: This basketball-crazy town is trying to lure a professional team to the city. That news reminded me of the best line I ever heard about the National Basketball Association season, which runs from October until June.

Said Atlanta Constitution sports editor Jesse Outlar, “If the NBA had been in charge of World War II, Germany and Japan would still be in the running.”

– Fort Worth: I met a man here who is planning to get married for the first time at age 44.

“I thought about doing something funny at the wedding like dressing up like the Japanese did when they surrendered to McArthur on the Missouri.

“A friend of mine reminded me of something, though. He said there are three things that do not have senses of humor, and they are brides, bureaucrats and old dogs.” Colorado cows are fierce

Nashville: I was watching the news on television here, and there was a story about airline pilots using cocaine. When the news was over, I went to the bar at the hotel and had several drinks before leaving for the airport.

– Los Angeles: I saw the new hit movie, “The Color of Money,” starring Paul Newman and Tom Cruise. It’s a sequel to Newman’s marvelous “The Hustler.” “Money” pales in comparison to “The Hustler.” In pool parlance, it scratches.

– Denver: This was in the papers. A Boulder, Colo., man has filed suit charging he was attacked by one of the defendant’s cows.

The suit says the cow is “vicious and has a dangerous propensity to charge and attack” and that it came at the plaintiff without provocation and rendered him unconscious.

It’s nice to be back home in Georgia, although I must remind myself it was a South Georgia attack bunny rabbit that once went after the president of the United States.

Lewis Grizzard Wednesday: Heartache For The Holidays

Heartache For The Holidays

New York – Trying to hail a taxi on a street corner in Manhattan at 5 in the afternoon is like trying to get one Buffalo’s attention as an entire herd rushes past.

You stand there like an idiot with your hand in the air, and the great yellow procession ignores you and rushes on by.

So I’m 20 minutes into this seemingly futile effort when a blue compact pulls in front of me and stops. There is a sign in the front window that reads: “Car for Hire.”

I don’t know if this is some sort of renegade cab driver or not, but at this point I don’t care.

I climb in the back seat and told the man in front where I wanted to go.

He is an elderly man, wearing a hat and thick glasses. We stop at a light as we go through Central Park.

The driver, who hasn’t spoken a word to this point, suddenly says, “It was five months today I lost my dear wife.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I reply.

“Five months ago today,” he repeats. “It’s tough, you know, this time of year.”

I imagined that it would be. For all the joy and hope Christmas brings to some, it can mean the searing pain of loneliness to others.

“How long were you married?” I ask.

“For 45 wonderful years,” the driver answers.

I’m sure I detect his voice breaking.

The man begins to cry. He takes off his thick glasses and wipes his eyes with his handkerchief. And we’re in rush-hour traffic. I’m concerned for my safety, but here’s an old man crying over his dead wife a week before Christmas.

He finally stopped crying and put his glasses back on.

“Before she died, ” he begins again, “she told me I would be OK. She had leukemia, you know. She knew she was dying, but I couldn’t accept it.

“She pulled me close to her and said, `You’re strong as a bull, you can make it without me.’ But it isn’t easy.”

“Any kids?” I ask.

He holds up four fingers. And then he starts crying again. And the glasses come off again and out comes the handkerchief again. This is a terribly delicate situation.

I thought about changing the subject to get my driver’s mind off his dead wife and back on the traffic. But what would I talk about – the weather?

“I met her in 1944,” he goes on. “Ever heard of Roseland?”

“The big dance place?” I ask.

“That’s the one. It was big back then. That’s where I met her, my wife. I walked in and she was the first girl I saw. She was wearing a white dress.

“I saw her and I noticed she was looking at me too, so I walked over, put my fingers under her chin and said, `Hello, gorgeous.’ That’s how the whole thing started. I just can’t believe she’s gone.”

“How old are you?” I ask the man.

“Sixty-six,” he answers.

“You’re still young,” I said, groping to keep up my end of the conversation. “Maybe you will find somebody else.”

“That’s what she told me before she died. She said I’d meet somebody else. I believe she’s up there in heaven looking down at me now. Maybe she’s even trying to find someone else for me.”

“Could be,” I say.

We arrive at my destination. I pay the guy, give him a generous tip and say, “Hang in there.”

“I was doing good until Christmas,” he says. His voice broke again. Off came the glasses again. He dried his eyes with the handkerchief again. Then he says goodbye and drives away.

Home alone in New York at Christmas. Only the movies could make it seem like anything but hell.

Lewis Grizzard Wednesday: The Medallions

Double Shot Of Medallions

Sea Island, Georgia – We had the Swingin’ Medallions for a pre-Georgia-Florida football game party here on this lovely isle, home of the five- star retreat, The Cloister.

They come to the Georgia coast by the thousands annually for the game, played in nearby Jacksonville.

The Swingin’ Medallions. I have asked often what, if anything, endures? Well, the Swingin’ Medallions and their kind of music – my generation’s music – has.

I first heard them sing and play in the parking lot of a fraternity house at the University of Georgia in 1965. They had the land’s No. 1 rock ‘n’ roll hit at the time, the celebrated, “Double Shot of My Baby’s Love.”

That was so long ago. I’d never been married and my father was living with me. He had appeared at my apartment one day after one of his long absences, hat in hand.

I gave him a bed. He got a job running a local cafeteria. He paid his part of the rent out of what he would bring home to eat each night from the cafeteria. I never had a better eating year.

We were strolling along the campus together and heard the music. We went to the fraternity parking lot from whence it came and listened for a half an hour.

Daddy said, “Marvelous music. Simply marvelous.”

My daddy said the same thing about World War II.

“Marvelous war. Simply marvelous.”

The major thought practically everything was marvelous, simply marvelous, except women who smoked. I’m not sure why he thought more of world wars than women who smoked. I never got to know the man that well.

The Swingin’ Medallions at the party were one original and the sons of originals. How nice to see one generation pass down its music to another. That rarely happens.

What clean-cut, personable young men they were. They let the more celebratory join for a few numbers behind their microphones.

There is something about a microphone and an amplifying system and a little see-through whiskey to bring out imagined musical talent.

They did “Double Shot” twice. And they played all the other great shagging sounds from the ’50s and ’60s.

Sure, I’ll list a few of them:

“Stand By Me.” Haunting melody if you listen to it very closely. Will you just hang around, darling, even through the bad times?

“My Girl.” The Temptations’ finest, in my mind.

“Be Young, Be Foolish, Be Happy.” The Tams greatest hit. I know a lady who wants it sung at her funeral.

“It’s funny about this kind of music,” one of the younger Medallions was saying. “We play for people your age [high side of 40 and up] and we play a lot of high school proms.

“The kids like it as much as you do, and they think it’s something brand new.”

Compared to what rock ‘n’ roll became in the ’70s, it’s tame music, soft music. It is music to which there are actually discernible words.

And, perhaps the best thing about it is, you can actually talk above it.

My generation hasn’t given what others have been asked to give. We’ve been through no depressions or world wars, for instance. We’ve given you Bill and Hillary.

But we have left our music, the kind the South Carolina-based Swingin’ Medallions still play with great feeling and just the right amount of showmanship for a group that didn’t riot when it was announced the bar was closing down at 10:30.

It was a nice party and nobody is young enough to jump in the pool anymore. Marvelous. Simply marvelous.

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: A Hole In One

I made a hole-in-one.

Honest, I did. This isn’t some sort of make-believe column like I often write. For instance, I recently wrote a make-believe column about Jim Bakker meeting his new cellmate, Mad Dog.

But this isn’t anything like that.

I mean that I hit the golf ball on a par 3 and it went in the hole for a “1.”

Do you know the thrill of writing a “1″ on a golf scorecard next to your name?

I’ve had my thrills in sports before. Playing for dear old Newnan High School back in ’63, I hit a jump shot at the buzzer to defeat the top-seeded team in the regional tournament.

That got my name and picture in the paper. (I wanted a kiss from a certain red-headed cheerleader, but she remarked how she detested kissing anybody covered in sweat.)

I also pitched a no-hitter in Pony League, finished second in a tennis tournament, hit a hard-way six on a crap table in Vegas, made back-to-back net eagles playing with Greg Norman in a pro-am tournament in Hilton Head and once had dinner with the girl who used to say, “Take it off. Take it all off,” in the old shaving cream commercial.

(I realize having dinner with a girl who made a shaving cream commercial has nothing to do with sports, but she made the commercial with Joe Namath, so there.)

But none of that compares with my hole-in-one.

Get the picture:

I’m on the par- three 12th hole at the lovely Island Club here in coastal Georgia. I admit No. 12 isn’t that long a hole, but I didn’t design the course, so it’s not my fault.

The hole is 128 yards over a small pond.

It was Saturday morning, November 4. I was playing in a threesome, comprised of myself, Tim Jarvis and Mike Matthews, two players of lesser talent with whom I often hang out.

It was a lovely morning, having warmed to the low 70s as I approached the tee. I was wearing an orange golf shirt, pair of Duckhead khaki slacks and my black and white golf shoes, the ones my dogs have not chewed up yet.

I was first on the tee.

“What are you going to hit?” asked Matthews.

“None of your business,” I said.

We were playing for a lot of money.

O.K., so we weren’t playing for a lot of money, but you never tell your opponent what club you’re hitting.

“Tell us,” said Jarvis, “or we’ll tell everybody how you move the ball in the rough when nobody’s looking.”

“Nine-iron,” I said.

The green sloped to the right. I said to myself, “Keep the ball to the left of the hole.”

(Actually I said, “Please, God, let me get this thing over the water.”)

I hit a high, arching shot. The ball cut through the still morning air, a white missile against the azure sky. (That’s the way Dan Jenkins or Herbert Warren Wind would have described it.”

The ball hit eight feet left of the pin. It hopped once. It hopped again. It was rolling directly toward the hole.

An eternity passed.

It has a chance to go in, I thought. But that’s not going to happen, of course, because I’m terribly unlucky and I’ve done some lousy things in my life and I don’t deserve it to go into the hole.

It went into the hole.

A “1.”

It was a joyous moment when my first hole-in-one fell snugly into the hole. But the best moment came at the next tee, the par four, 13th.

For those non-golfers, the person with the lowest score on the previous hole gets to hit first on the next hole.

I strode to the tee with my driver, teed up my ball and then said to my opponents, “I think I’m up, but did anybody have a zero?”

Jarvis and Matthews were good friends. I shall miss them.