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SNP (1)

Don’t Take My Mama

It’s not my fault. Everyone in my family disagrees with me. But it’s true.
 
I did not try to kill my mama.
 
At least not on purpose.
 
By now, most people know that I have a travel curse. It started a few years in Alaska.
 
On that particular trip, I had a nasty wreck in a rental car and ever since…. well, let’s just say that anytime I travel more a couple miles from home, something happens.
 
Someone gets sick. Someone gets injured. Dogs and cats go into heat. Or someone dies.
 
I guess it actually started long before Alaska. For years, every time my lovely wife went away and left me in charge of things, the curse would strike.
 
One of our animals would die. A dog. An alpaca. A squirrel.
 
Sometimes the curse struck the children. None of them died but it came close a few times.
 
Then I went to Alaska and something happened.
 
I must have peed on some sacred ground somewhere or spit on the unknown mass grave of a Native American tribe or something.
 
Whatever it was, the Curse as we now call it, began in earnest.
 
I would travel to go see my daughter and suffer some grave illness. Or take a cruise and disaster would befall the other passengers in some manner.
 
Bubonic plague. Hemmoroids. Fallen arches.
 
Sometimes it would be me. Something it would be others. But it would always strike.
 
I never intended for anything bad to happen. But it did.
 
At first, it was just me that suffered. And then the Curse began to spread like a coffee stain on a white tablecloth.
 
My wife. My kids. Random strangers.
 
Anyone who knew me, was related to me or just passed me
on the street was at risk of losing life or limb.
 
I prayed for deliverance. Carried a rabbit’s foot. Burned sage and recited incantations.
 
But the Curse would not release me.
 
This past week, my wife and I flew to Phoenix to visit our daughter. I had barely announced that I was was leaving when I got a deluge of messages warning me not to go.
 
“Don’t kill anyone.”
 
“Nice knowing you.”
 
“Don’t think about me ‘cause I don’t want to lose a kidney.”
 
All those messages were supposedly delivered a little ‘tongue & cheek’ but I knew that people were oddly serious.
 
I had a curse and they didn’t want its tendrils passing their way.
 
I’m sure most of the people who knew I was leaving took extra precautions.
 
Like increasing their life insurance or painting their door posts with blood.
 
I felt guilty going on a trip knowing the lives in so many people were in my hands.
 
My own wife was the worst. She called the kids and told them not to stand under a tree during a thunderstorm or eat shellfish.
 
You know, just in case.
 
We got on the plane on Monday and headed west. After three hours, we landed. No one had died during our flight.
 
Or at least I don’t think they did. A couple folks looked a little sickly. Maybe it was just Covid.
 
The first day in Phoenix was pretty uneventful. We had dinner and no one came down with food poisoning.
 
The second day was also pretty normal. We had both Mexican and Thai food. I thought surely that would kill me or my wife but somehow we made it through the night.
 
Day three dawned warm and bright. We decided to head north a couple of hours to the Petrified Forest.
 
During the drive up, my daughter made us listen to two different podcast describing how people who had stolen pieces of the ancient petrified trees had found themselves cursed upon getting home.
 
I’m pretty sure that was aimed at me.
 
The day was pretty normal. We walked down several paths that dropped off into the abyss below but miraculously none of us fell to our death.
 
Considering my past, both my wife and daughter seemed surprised that none of us were killed.
 
Especially me.
 
But they did scream at me every time I bent and picked up a pebble from the ground.
 
I think they thought that me just touching a tiny sliver of petrified wood was gong to bring on an instant plague of locusts.
 
I touched them anyway. And there were no locusts, no one started to bleed from any orafice of their body and my head didn’t fall off and roll down the hill.
 
For a moment, I thought that maybe the Curse had been broken. Maybe my rabbit foot was finally working.
 
And then my phone rang. It was my sister back in Georgia.
 
“Mom fell this morning,” she said.
 
For a moment, I held my breath. While I out was here tempting fate by touching cursed rocks, the Curse was lurking in my wake.
 
This time back in Georgia.
 
“Is she okay?” I asked, fully expecting my sister to tell me that my dear 88-year-old mama was in the hospital, hooked up to a plethora of wires and hoses,
on the brink of death.
 
It would serve me right if she was. My arrogance had killed her.
 
“Yeah, she’s okay. She has a fracture in her wrist and a small break in her shoulder but the doctor said she’ll be okay.”
 
Wait, that was it?
 
I paused for a moment before replying, expecting my sister to tell me that she also had bleeding on the brain, had knocked out all of her teeth and would need a glass eye when all was said and done.
 
But she didn’t. Just some bruises and broken bones, which I admit is not good for someone her age but at least I hadn’t killed her.
 
My sister must have sensed what I was thinking and told me with a laugh that knowing my history of death and mayhem following me around the globe, she was actually a little surprised my mom wasn’t in need of a brain transplant or two wooden legs.
 
Thanks, sis.
 
I told her I was sorry. I never intended to kill my mama. I mean, if I could somehow pick who became victim of the Curse, it would be somebody like the idiots who work at the McDonald’s drive-thru or that kid in 3rd grade who never picked me for basketball.
 
Jerk.
 
But apparently, I have no control over who is struck down by the Curse. It can be my dear mama or the serial killer down the street.
 
Fate decides.
 
We got to the airport to fly home and the announcer came over the intercom and announced that our flight had been delayed.
 
Uh, oh. The wings must have fallen off the plane out on the tarmac and the airport ran out of duct tape.
 
Then she said that the plane was overbooked. To me, that meant that every seat, aisle and cabinet in the galley would be filled with some fat guy with a bomb in his shoe.
 
She asked if any of us passengers would like to rebook for a later flight.
I thought about that scene in the movie ‘Final Destination’ when one of the characters has a premonition that the plane was going to explode on takeoff.
 
Was something like about to happen to us?
 
I looked over at my wife and asked her if maybe we should wait for a later flight. She replied rather nonchalantly that we had nothing to worry about. I had already tried to kill my mama so the Curse had run its course.
 
“I didn’t try to kill my mama,” I exclaimed.
 
“Well, let’s just say you didn’t succeed. This time.”
 
This time? Was she implying that I would try again in the future to off the old gal?
 
They called for our flight and I didn’t get a chance to respond. It was time to get on the plane and go home.
 
As we stepped off the jetway into the cabin, I looked back at the wing and saw a guy on a ladder doing something to it.
 
I assumed he was applying some fresh Elmer’s glue to where it connected to the cabin.
 
I looked at my wife and was about to mention it, then stopped.
 
If we went down, I didn’t want to mess up my chance to say “I told you so.”
 
My mama is fine. We made it home without the wings falling off.
 
I’m just holding my breath to see who is going to drop dead next.
 
And trying to find a place to hide the piece of petrified wood
 
I smuggled home in my underwear.

SNP (2)

Just Hold It

I have decided that the two worst places to be embarrassed are 2nd grade and church.
 
Not necessarily in that order.
 
Do something stupid in 2nd grade and it will follow you all of your life. They’ll give you a nickname that will haunt you the rest of your days.
 
Something like Booger.
 
Maybe it’s easy to be embarrassed at church because we’re so vulnerable there.
 
We sing, actually out loud in front of people. We pray which puts us at quite a disadvantage if that’s if ninjas decide to attack.
 
And you’re not supposed to get up and just wander around.
 
I guess in some churches, wandering around is accepted and maybe even encouraged. We went to a revival at this local church several years ago where a woman ran in a big circle around the congregation the entire service. She was screaming something that I couldn’t make out.
 
It sounded like, “there’s a scorpion in my girdle,” but I couldn’t be sure.
 
But in my church, just getting up at random times and walking around is usually discouraged.
 
Which made my plight even worse.
 
I play keyboards in our little church band. I sit up on stage behind this big keyboard with a light shining down on me.
 
It’s hard to do normal things while sitting up there in the spotlight.
 
Like pick your nose or dig your pants out of your crack.
 
Any movement and people’s eyes are immediately drawn to it. Which made what happened next quite a conundrum.
 
Or, as my granddaughter says, “You’re in a pickle, Pippy!”
 
Yeah, I was in a pickle.
 
We’re playing along just like we do every week, and about halfway through the second song, it happened.
 
I had to go.
 
I don’t mean tinkle. I had to GO! And go NOW!
 
My wife and I both take a big handful of magnesium at night. It helps us sleep.
 
But it also has a pretty nasty side effect. It turns you into a goose.
 
You even watched a goose walk around? When they need to do their business, they don’t run into the bushes or squat over a hole.
 
They just go. Who cares? They are apparently not easily embarrassed like us.
 
I needed to go and if I didn’t get to a restroom soon, the inside of the church would look slightly worse than the Battle of Gettysburg.
 
But I couldn’t just get up and make a scene. That would be only slightly worse than painting the walls of the church a nice new shade of brown.
 
I looked out into the congregation and tried to signal my wife that I was in crisis. She loves the worship part of church and was oblivious to my pinched facial expressions.
 
I wasn’t sure what she could have done for me in this situation anyway. Run and get me a bed pan? Put down some of those absorbent puppy pads around my piano bench?
 
None of these would have helped anyway. I couldn’t stop playing long enough to get on top of that bedpan.
 
So, I soldiered on.
 
Somehow I finished that song without getting up and dashing towards the back door. And I couldn’t do that. People might think I was filled with the Holy
Spirit or maybe I have worms.
 
The song ended. Here was my chance.
 
And then the band started right into the next song. My escape window had passed. I would have to get through this last song before something happened that would get me excommunicated not only from our church, but probably from my own family.
 
I squeezed my knees together. I bit my tongue. I prayed.
 
“Lord, allow this to pass from me,” was what I was going to pray but decided that this request could very easily be misinterpreted by God and the waters of the muddy Nile may be unleashed immediately.
 
The only thing I could think to pray was, “God, please!”
 
He must have heard me because my distress seemed to ease a little.
 
‘I’ll get through this,’ I told myself. ‘I’m strong and apparently I don’t have to wait in line for God to answer my prayers. I must be very holy.’
 
That was the wrong affirmation.
 
God must have been listening to that last part and his answer was swift and strong.
 
“Holy? Huh! We’ll see about that.’
 
And with that, the cramps came back with a fury. Oh, no! God was about to teach me and my stupid mouth a lesson.
 
I clinched my teeth. Crossed my eyes. Pressed my feet into the floor hard enough to dislocate both knees. And I kept going.
 
And I suddenly realized who was behind this. Other than the magnesium. It was Satan himself.
 
He knew my weaknesses.
 
Puppies. Roller coasters. Peppermint Schnapps. Holding it.
 
We were getting close to the end of the song and I could feel the battle between good and evil being fought in my bowels.
 
Satan was determined to get me banned from every church south of Macon.
I was about to say, ‘Satan, get behind me,’ but considering that was where the problem was, I resisted.
 
Just one more chorus. Please Lord, help me keep it in for just one last chorus.
 
Just a few measures away until sweet release.
 
And then the praise leader did something unexpected. He got caught up in the moment and decided to sing another chorus.
 
NO!
 
We’ve already played the chorus like 498 times. I know God loves to be praised, but singing it through one more time seemed like a little overkill to me.
 
I wondered what would happen if I just blurted out, “Come on, man! I’m dying over here!”
 
There would be gasps from the congregation. A scornful look from the pastor.
 
It would be my last day in the band.
 
So once again, I clenched and silently said a couple of Hail Mary’s and then the Lord’s Prayer, hoping God would show me just a smidge of mercy.
 
I guess he must have heard me because the worship leader finally brought the long, repetitive song to a close.
 
I was free!
 
I ran down the aisle like a fat guy trying to smuggle a honey-baked ham out of the store in my pants.
 
I needed to run. But I didn’t want to jar anything loose.
 
It was like running with a vial of nitroglycerin.
 
Remember all those cowboy movies where they would transport nitroglycerin in a train and one tiny vibration would blow up the entire state of Oklahoma?
 
It was kinda’ like that.
 
Luckily nobody stopped me to talk. That happens a lot in the lobby of our church where people hang out and try to draw you into conversations about such exciting topics as which was the best leftover donut in the box or quantum physics.
 
I wasn’t sure what would have happened if somebody was already in the bathroom stall.
 
If it was occupied, I would have probably pulled the fire alarm. Hey, if this wasn’t an emergency, I don’t what is.
 
Luckily, no one was in the bathroom. No need to call the fire department.
 
In the end, all was well.
 
Satan was vanquished. God reigns.
 
I’m still in the band.
SNP2 (1)

LAZING

I don’t want to cast scorn group upon an entire generation, but dang if Gen-Zers ain’t lazy.
 
That’s not me saying it. That’s the mighty New York Times.
 
According to one of their columnists, the latest couple of generations are quite different than our generation of us ‘old folks.’
 
For one thing, they don’t want to work.
 
Oh, they do work but it’s got to be what they want to do with their life so they manage to somehow go home to sleep before they jump back on the treadmill the next day.
 
Can you imagine?
 
Who doesn’t want to leave the house at 7am, work all day putting a round peg into a square hole and come home 10 hours later so exhausted you can’t move?
 
Well, I guess I can appreciate that. Working a normal day and also having time to focus whatever you want? Anywhere else.
 
I would like that. Bet that a lot of people don’t.
 
It’s unamerican, slothful and ungodly to not be chained to your desk all see day. I like the idea working from home. So I’ll let them slide on that one, too
 
But Gen-Z also don’t to do much work even when they are at work. The NYT made up some statistic to go with that statement. Faux news!!
 
If we would let them just drink their skinny lattes at their desks and post a bunch of selfies for a couple of hours, then they could go home and finish their work while sitting on their beanbag with Ed Sheeran singing all his hits on your Bluetooth speaker.
 
Now why us old folks in the office being glared at all day by people want to that? We all got up this morning and WENT to work like good citizens do.
 
Because this is what Americans do
 
You know, now that you mention it, I do kind of think it would be fun not to have to fight traffic every morning and afternoon. and sit in a cubicle all day. It would be nice working at my deak at home.
 
So I’ll give then that one, too.
 
But here’s the kicker… the down right laziness.. the sloth… .. you know, I like the idea of working from home people don’t want me to be happy!
 
Unlike my generations or even my own children’s’ generation who were always going somewhere- soccer practice, dance rebuttal, band, football
games- nope, Gen-Zers just stay at home.
 
I heard about this odd practice while listening to some that news on NPR. (The earth is round? balderdash!)
 
The velvet tongue reporter said that when GenZ workers go home, they put on pajamas and stay in their beds with their dogs. All evening!
 
I scoffed when I heard that. Yes, actually scoffed. Go look it up.
 
There’s a great big world out there full of excitement and adventure. Who wants to just in the house all day?
 
Well, this weekend, I learned who. Me. That’s who.
 
As most of my gentle readers know, I still need to get a hernia operation but my health insurance people are like, ‘no way, just die already!’
 
Their refusal to pay for a hernia surgery might not have had those exact words on the denial I got, but that’s what they meant.
 
And because of that, I have been fighting the pain and crossing my fingers until the first of the year, or it is deemed emergency.
 
Heck, if that happens, they have to do it whether my insurance pays or not. Pbbbtz!
 
Well, my wish came true over the weekend. I started having a little hernia pain a couple weeks ago. It got worse when I single-handedly lifted a 500-lb beam over my head to nail it to a swing set. It might have been 700 lbs.
 
After that show of incredible strength, I felt a little in pain in my side.
 
Uh, oh! I thought. I’ve broken something.
 
The pain steadily got worse and by Thursday night I had all I cpuld stomach, (get it?) and told my beautiful bride that I needed to go to the hospital and get me my free government operation. I would whip in and out and be home before dark to catch the next episode of Fallout.
 
But hold on there, speedy boy- they had different ideas
We got there about 5:15pm. Let the lady at the front desk know that his will probably be my last time ever seeing sunshine unless I could get into an operation. And I mean stat!
 
They say that do at all emergency rooms around the world, and people jump. Not here. She pointed me to the waiting room.
 
Those fancy waiting room chairs were expensive. We are going to make people sit in them for multiple hours so we can get our money’s worth.
 
The lady said not to eat in drink anything and wait my turn.
She didn’t tell my wife not to eat or drink. She did. Two candy bars right in front of me! Heartless!
 
After a little over fours, they called us back and put us in one of the ER cubicles. Then we waited there for the nurse and doctor to appear which took another hour.
 
The doc pulled down my pants and dug his fingers down in my cabbage patch for a good ten minutes.
 
I hope the guy has some good soap because he, prodded and pulled on everything down there.
 
Finally he sat me up and announced, “you have bilateral hernia.”
 
“What did you say? Baptist hernias?”
 
‘No, bilateral. It means one on each side.”
 
He stuck his hand back down into the Black Forest.
 
“One there..”
 
“Ow!!!”
 
And one right over here.”
 
“Whoa Nelly!”
 
My wife perked up. She has been wanting my to get these hernias fixed and here was her chance.
 
“How soon can you book him in Surgical Suite? Tonight? You know what they say, you cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.
 
Abraham Lincoln said that. You know, the president.”
 
She beamed like a kid in Sunday School who had recited all 66 books from the Bible from memory.
 
The doctor backed up a bit, wanting to escape the ‘spit zone’ of me and this crazy woman.
 
“I am sorry, ma’am, but that is an outpatient procedure and you’ll have to make arrangements with the surgeon’s office.”
 
My wife was unfettered. She gave me a little shove towards the doc and told him much pain I was in. I’m mean, it’s obvious in his haggard face!
 
The doc said he understood but that was the way they did it. Which was code for ‘somebody keep Security on standby.’
 
He said that instead of surgery, he would give me a special massage designed to make the hernia smaller.
 
I have never had a massage in that particular area and things grew smaller but I agreed. Go to it, Dr. Handsy!
 
Long story sort- the fine young doc was able to push all my innards back in their various holes, and I rather enjoyed the procedure.
 
“We’re going to give you some pain medicine and when that kicks in, we’ll send you home,” the doc said.
 
My wife just scowled.
 
So how does all that hospital stuff have anything to do with the ‘leissa-fare’ attitude of Gen Z-ers.
 
My doc told me to go home and not do anything for three days. Just like those Gen-Zers
 
That’s what they do. Basically nothing.
 
I didn’t think I could do nothing for the whole weekend. I was wrong.
 
I have laid on this couch for the last three days. The weekend is not officially over until Monday and I am not moving until then.
 
Gen-Z doesn’t like working in dead end jobs. They like working from home.
 
They like to go home and hibernate.
 
Guess what? Turns out I’m a Gen-Z, too.
 
Hey, FOMO!
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Go Bag

This past Monday, I sat on my back porch and waited for the world to end.
 
For the rivers to turn to blood, to be eaten by a swarm of locusts followed by the return of
 
Jesus.
 
According to everything I had read or seen online, Monday’s total eclipse was supposed to cause all that and more.
 
Some people claimed that when the world went dark, Jesus would return on a white horse. It had something to do with the eclipse path making a cross. Or a starfish.
 
I’m not sure which one so I just patiently on my back porch and waited for the trumpet to sound so I could fly up to heavens.
 
And then, nothing happened. Absolutely nothing.
 
Jesus didn’t come back. At least not for me. There was a pesky bumble bee that kept buzzing my head. But no locusts.
 
I didn’t grow a horn out of my forehead or lose the feeling in my left earlobe.
 
None of the things those bozos on the internet said would happen.
 
I didn’t really see anything different than any other Monday afternoon. At 3:05pm when chaos was supposed to reign, nothing happened. The sky didn’t get dark. There were no earthquakes , no swarm of frogs falling from the sky or cats and dogs lying down together.
 
Nothing.
 
So I went inside and back to work. Like any other day.
 
But Monday was not like any other day. For the first time that I can remember, Americans lost their collective sanity.
 
And where there are crazy people, there are hucksters.
 
Some guy was selling ‘eclipse insurance’ online. He guaranteed that if you sent him $49.95, you would be covered in case of a hurricane, volcanic eruption or the banking system crashed and we all had to start buying stuff with turnips.
 
Another guy was on TV saying that people should shave their heads and wrap themselves in tinfoil so they could be recognized by passing aliens and picked up on their way to Jupiter.
 
But the one that really caught my attention was some guy trying to
convince the listeners of his talk show that the one thing the eclipse taught us was that everyone should have a ‘go bag.’
 
You know, just in case.
 
In case of what I wondered. The guy never said but he seemed to be implying that if we didn’t have a ‘go bag’ packed and sitting by the front door, we would be easy pickings for the zombie aliens who would soon come to eat our brains.
 
Exactly what was I supposed to put in my ‘go bag’? Snacks? A clean pair of sock? A snake bite kit?
 
I went to the World Wide Web (while it still worked) to see if I could find out.
First, I wondered what exactly should a go bag look like. I found a bullet-proof, waterproof, nuclear-proof backpack with full body armor from JanSport for $600.
 
I don’t want to sound picky but I sincerely doubt a backpack is going to save you if the Russians fire a nuclear warhead at your trailer.
 
There were cheaper options, of course. Some for less than $50 but they made no promises to protect you from an atomic blast or being shot with an Ak-47 while standing in line at the donut shop.
 
I opted for a leftover plastic Walmart bag that I found behind the trash can. It wasn’t bulletproof but it was free.
 
So what exactly was I supposed to put in my ‘Walmart go bag’ anyway? I have little experience with preparing for the end of the world. I know what to do if I’m washing my hair and the water stops coming out of the shower head, but the end of all mankind?
 
Nope.
 
So I looked that up, too. And discovered that you don’t even have to think about it. Amazon has 47 pages of pre-packaged kits ready for your ‘bug out’ bag. And they offer free next day delivery.
 
Hopefully, the next time the end of the world is imminent, we will get 24 hours notice.
 
Most of these ‘kits’ were just filled with useless crap.
 
Like pouches our instant water. Just put a spoonful in your mouth and if you can manage to work up some spit, you would have all the fresh water you would even need.
 
And most of those kits came with a plethora of first aid supplies. Bandaids, toenail clippers, a tube for siphoning gas and one of those emergency blankets that’s made from the same material used to wrap Juicy Fruit gum.
 
I’ve never understood how a little thin tinfoil blanket is supposed to keep you warm if your spaceship crashes on Neptune, but NASA thinks otherwise.
Science.
 
Most of the Amazon kits had some food. Mostly freeze-dried kale and tofu popsicles. Nothing anyone in their right mind would eat even if the world was coming to an end.
 
I didn’t want my ‘go bag’ to be filled with all that sissy crap. So I decided to make my own list of what I would pack in my Walmart bag.
 
There would be no freeze-dried water or snacks made from crickets on my list but I do think it might keep me alive until the tsunami takes me.
 
I would pack some first aid items. A tube of Neosporin and a small box of SpoungeBob Squarepants bandaids. Face it, if a T-Rex emerges from hibernation during the next eclipse, that fancy torniquet and Gaboon Viper anti-venom isn’t going help you run any faster.
 
I would ditch the emergency poncho and toss in a nice camel
hair overcoat. Hey, if I go out in a blaze of glory, I want to look good.
And forget the freeze-dried tofu crap. All I would need is big bag of Corn Nuts (the world’s greatest snack) and a 2-liter bottle of Mt. Dew.
 
I might throw in a bag of pork rinds. Got to have some protein to keep my strength up for when I have to fight off the genetically-modified bear gators.
 
I was thinking about tossing in my cpap machine but figured there would be no place to plug it in when the power grid goes down.
 
Sorry, baby, but there will be some pretty vicious snoring in our bomb shelter.
 
So I got all my ‘go bag’ stuff lined up on the table- my Corn Nuts, banjo strings and toilet plunger. Now it was time to get them into my bag.
 
I stuffed my SpongeBob SquarePants bandaids and Neosporin in the bottom. My Axe body spray and pork rinds next, the dill pickle flavored ones, and then my jug of Mt Dew. I figured when the world ends, I’m just going to Do the Dew!
 
I tossed in my toenail clippers, eyelash glue and my Delta State University ball cap (Go Fighting Okra!).
 
Then disaster struck.
 
I picked up my Walmart ‘go bag’ and the bottom fell out! My toenail clippers punctured the Corn Nuts bag and they spilled all over the floor. And then my Mt. Dew bottled rolled off the table, down the hallway and under the couch.
 
Uh oh, I thought. Mt. Dew is going to spew all over the place when I open it in my bomb shelter later.
 
I’ll need to add some Wet Wipes!
 
Apparently the tensil strength of my plastic Walmart bag isn’t even close to that of the $600 bullet-proof, nuclear fission-resistant backpack from JanSport.
 
This was a problem. I still needed to pack my 64-ounce tube of hemorrhoid cream, cotton candy machine and pickle ball racquet. What now?
 
I can’t have my ‘go bag’ busting open while I’m fleeing from a swarm of killer bees infected with typhoid fever.
 
I rooted around in the pantry and found a used Piggly Wiggly paper sack-one of double bagger ones. That should be strong enough to hold my blender and antique hat pin collection and still leave some room for the waffle iron.
 
I got everything stuffed in that sack-even the accordion, and set it by the back door. I wrote ‘Jeff’s Go Bag- DO NOT TOUCH’ in big letters on the side with a Sharpie.
 
I was ready for the next eclipse. It is supposed to occur in 2045.
 
I’ll be 82 then.
 
You better throw in a bottle of Viagra.
 
You know, just in case me and Scarlett Johansson have to repopulate the Earth.
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Korean Barbeque

To most people, these two words harken to images of savory food enjoyed in an exotic atmosphere.
 
Not me.
 
The mere mention of the words, Korean and barbecue in the same sentence brings back terrible memories of one of the worst nights of my life.
 
I thought about that dreadful night this weekend when my beautiful wife and I decided to go down to Tallahassee and try out the new Korean Barbecue place.
 
Our company had filmed a commercial for the restaurant a couple weeks ago and made it look delicious.
 
But, when I mentioned it to my wife instead of her saying, “Let’s go eat,” her reply was a deep moan.
 
She remembers that night all those years ago when Korean/Mongolian barbecue almost killed her. Well, not just her. All of us.
 
We took our kids on a trip to see the sites in our nation’s capital. They wanted to go to Smithsonian and all the other stuff in Washington, DC, and since admission to all those places was free, we thought it would make an affordable trip with lots of wonderful memories.
 
Little did we just know the horror that would soon befall us.
 
No, we didn’t get eaten by a dinosaur at the museum of natural history. The Wright Brothers plane didn’t fall off its mount in the Air & Space Museum and flatten us like a bug.
 
Oh no, this was a much worse.
 
Ever since our kids were little, we have tried to expose them to as many places and as many unique cultures as possible. We figured the more they knew about the world the better they would be able to live happily in it.
 
So we went everywhere.
 
The mountains, the beach, caverns, abandoned mines,
decommissioned nuclear test sites, and a plethora of museums
 
And while we were at all of these far-flung places, we would always try some of the local cuisine.
 
Sometimes that meant beignets in New Orleans, chicken and waffles in Atlanta, our Cuban food in Miami.
 
Our family was a little different. OK, a lot different. Instead of eating fried chicken and fries, which seems to be the most common diet in Southwest Georgia, we went for more exotic fare.
 
We tried frog legs, crêpes, lavender ice cream, and my kid’s personal favorite, sushi. There was lots of sushi. It’s a wonder my kids don’t have a tape worm.
 
So when we arrived in DC, we decided to seek out something we had never tried before: real authentic Korean/Mongolian barbecue.
 
We’ve had plenty of barbecue over the years. Remember JB’s down in Beachton? We single-handedly kept those folks in business.
 
Well, Korean barbecue is nothing like JB’s.
 
Instead of big plates of smoked brisket and chicken delivered to your table slathered in sauce, Korean barbecue is served at your table raw.
 
Yeah, raw. Half the fun of the experience is taking the slices of raw meat, usually beef or pork, and cooking them yourself on a small ‘grill’ in the center of the table.
 
I guess it’s not really what we consider a grill. It’s more like an overturned wash pot that’s heated up to what feels like a couple thousand degrees.
 
You could cook a squirrel on that thing in no time flat, although you won’t find any rodents on the menus.
 
Well, maybe some cat meat. Who knows?
 
After charring your strips of meat on that blazing grill, you dip them into a variety of different sauces.
 
Not ketchup or honey mustard sauce. The sauce were a little more exotic than that. Thing like ssamjang (soybean paste and chili paste) and gochujang (a spicy chili paste).
 
Spicy is the key word here. Koreans apparently are immune to the kind of stuff that would kill your grandmother and your little sissy cousin, Rick with that hoop earring in his left nostril.
 
This stuff is blazing and packs a nice dose of heartburn with each bite.
 
But that didn’t stop our little youngins from digging in and eating like someone who had been buried under a building for a month with nothing to eat but their own toenails.
 
When the waiter told them it was ‘all you can eat’, my two sons looked at each other and smiled.
 
This would be another test of their manhood. Today’s battle: Who could eat the most spicy food without throwing up.
 
My scrappy daughter was right there with them. Just because you have external plumbing didn’t mean you were naturally inclined to being the best at a gourge fest.
 
My wife and I sat back and just watched the carnage.
 
Those kids must have eaten 30 pounds each of those little strips of meat.
 
The contest was not just to see who could hold down the most food without hurling. Oh, no! This was also a test of who had an iron stomach.
 
With every trip to refill their plates of meat, they began dipping those little morsels in hotter and hotter sauces.
 
Their bellies stretched. They sweated. Their faces grew red. And they washed down those morsels with gallons of Mt. Dew.
 
I should have known right then and there that this would not end well.
We should have sold them to somebody on the street instead of taking them with us back to the hotel.
 
They ate so much that I was afraid the owner of the establishment was going to come out of kitchen with a meat cleaver and chase us out of the restaurant.
 
Finally, after eating an entire cow and decimating the hog population of the greater DC area, they were full.
 
We paid the bill and waddled out of the restaurant.
 
Before we got back, one of my sons was already complaining that he didn’t feel so good.
 
I told him that’s what you get when you eat 100 pounds of beef dipped in lava.
 
That didn’t make him feel any better.
 
Back then, to save money we would all stay in one room at the hotel. A couple kids in one bed, my wife and I in another bed, and one kid on a rollaway.
 
Budgets were tight so our living quarters were as well.
 
Somehow, everyone managed to get into their pajamas without throwing up on each other and off to bed we went , collective moans of misery filling the room.
 
And then it started.
 
Armageddon.
 
I smelled the first volley waft through the air and over my head towards my wife.
 
It was like the breath of a dog that had eaten the butthole of a dead possum.
 
One of my sons giggled and said, “Sorry.”
 
I considered this just a minor infraction. Nothing to get upset about. We all have occasional flatulence.
 
Even people who you would never expect to break wind do it. Like Taylor Swift and the Queen.
 
Yeah, the old gal probably held it in until the state dinner was over and she was tucked tightly away in her Windsor Palace bedroom. And she would rip one that could kill a corgi.
 
Jolly-O!
 
Flatulence is natural. The average person farts at least 15 times per day. For teenage boys, it’s more like 399 times a day.
 
Nothing to get upset about. Unless you were in that Washington, DC hotel room on that fateful night.
 
The Horrible Night of Korea’s Revenge, as our family calls it.
 
What happened in that room for the next several hours was anything but normal.
 
That first little poot that came about ten minutes after we went to bed opened the floodgates of hell.
 
Suddenly, both boys had the one cheek squeak. I feared the curse would catch us all sooner or layer, except my dainty little wife. She claims that she would never do something as vile as passing wind.
 
I know that’s a lie but I just go along with her delusion.
 
The butt trumpets began to blow until the room was filled with what sounded like the London Symphony Brass Section playing Ride of the Valkyries.
 
And the odor!
 
I don’t know how to describe it in terms that people would understand.
 
It was vile and noxious and was akin to the odor that one would experience if they somehow fell into a long abandoned septic tank. One built before Napoleon’s invasion of Austria.
 
After a plague of dysentery.
 
My wife gagged. Not figuratively. She literally gagged and for a moment I thought the noxious odor of Korean barbecue flatulence would join the alluring bouquet of Korean barbecue vomit.
 
My wife told the boys to “Stop it!” She has a very low tolerance for flatulence and considers the producer of such disgusting fumes a true menace to society.
 
Then my daughter started.
 
Not my precious little baby girl! She had been attacked by the curse of the Koreans, too.
 
Her farts came out in a higher pitch, kind of like a piccolo- she was a girl after all- but the odor was just as noxious.
 
The boys heard their sister’s air release and considered that a provocation. Sorta’ like America and North Korea.
 
Challenge accepted.
 
While the cacophony of odoriferous music was being played a few feet away, I suddenly felt the urge to expel a little gas myself.
 
Oh, no. The monster has gotten ahold of me, too.
 
I tried to hold it in by squeezing my ample butt cheeks together and telling my sphincter that if he didn’t keep his mouth shut, there would be hell to pay.
 
I might go eat a couple of spicy burritos and how would he like that?
But my butt muscles were busy at the moment trying to keep me out of divorce court.
 
I tried as hard as I could but my rebellious anal zone betrayed me and I let one rip.
 
My wife removed the pillow from her face long enough to give me a look I recognized. It meant ‘don’t expect to see me naked until Christmas.’
 
Then she lept from our bed and barricaded herself in the bathroom. Most likely so she could fart in peace.
 
The performance of Lovett’s Butt Symphony #5 in E minor continued way into the wee hours of the next morning.
 
I’m pretty sure that the next day, when the housekeeper opened the door to our room, she immediately called the CDC who dispatched a hazmat team to remove the sheets from our beds and burn them in the parking lot.
 
We made some great memories on that trip. And learned some valuable lessons. Never eat Korean Barbecue again. And never share a room with those disgusting offspring of ours’.
 
Our visit to the Korean barbecue place today was as fun and tasty.
 
So far, I have not experienced the return of the ‘Mongolian Barbecue Plague of 2005.’
 
But the day is young. My disobedient digestive system could just be waiting to launch a surprise attack. After we get home and go to bed.
 
If you want to know how it turned out, just check the obituaries in the paper next week.
 
It will state that I accidentally fell on a butcher knife.
 
Nine times.
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Bad Egg

Easter was a lot different when I was a kid.
 
You know, back in the ‘Olden Days.’ Back before there were cell phones, cars with seatbelts and microwave popcorn.
 
For one thing, Easter was a big day. Second only to Christmas.
 
Everyone went to church. And I mean everyone. If you weren’t seen at a local church on Easter morning, you can guarantee that your neighbors would look at you the next morning like you murdered a small child.
 
We would have so many people show up at our church, we had to to bring in folding chairs from the fellowship hall and set them up in the aisles.
 
Made collecting the morning offering a little tricky, but we managed somehow.
 
Those were the days when they passed the offering plate down the pew so
everyone knew how much money you put in.
 
And you better have put in something or you were likely to denied participation in the big dinner-on-the-grounds following the morning service.
 
These days, despite the big praise bands, light shows, giant LED screens, and pastors who wear blue jeans on Sunday morning (you know, so they seem ‘hip and cool’), our churches are like ghost towns. Even on Easter morning.
 
On my way to church this morning, I passed more people out mowing their grass than getting ready for church.
 
Another thing I remember from those old days was how people dressed up on Easter.
 
My mom and sister wore matching dresses that my mother had sewn herself.
 
And my brother and I would always get a new suit.
 
Bright lime green or baby blue leisure suits with wide-collared silky shirts boasting some of the most horrid patterns known to man.
 
We looked like tiny versions of John Travolta from Saturday Night Fever.
 
You had to get to church early because it would be packed. And I remember we always sang the hymn ‘Up from the Grave He Arose’. All three verses.
 
But the best part of Easter, at least for us kids, were the Easter Egg Hunts.
 
There were no plastic eggs in those days, or at least not around my house.
 
If real eggs were good enough for Jesus, they were good enough for us. That was in the Bible some where. 2nd Phillipus, I think.
 
The week before Easte, my mother would go to the A&P and get each of us kids an egg coloring kit.
 
It came in a colorful box and included little color tablets you dropped into vinegar, some cheap wire hoops for dipping the eggs with and- if you spent a dollar more- even stencils that you could use to make your eggs extra special.
 
We never got those. My mom said it was an unecessary waste of money.
 
Come on, Mom. A dollar? Jesus would do it!
 
We each got a dozen eggs- from our own chickens, not the store. My mom would boil them in a big pot and after they cooled, the decorating fun would begin.
 
We would spread out old newspapers on the table and go at it.
 
I can still smell that colored vinegar we dipped those eggs in.
 
I would draw a pattern on my eggs with crayons to which the color would not stick. I got pretty good at drawing the Easter Bunny. Or at least I thought so.
 
My brother said it look Ed the Talking Horse.
 
My sister was creative, dipping her eggs in multiple colors to make stripes.
 
I tried that and mine just came out looking like I dipped them in mud.
 
After we were finished, we’d pile those colored eggs into a big basket for my parents to hide in the yard.
 
These days, parents make it easy for kids to find the eggs. They just waddle around the yard and toss the eggs right on top of grass.
 
There isn’t much of a challenge for the kids these days. They just run around the yard like rabid squirrels looking for nuts.
 
But not in my day. Adults didn’t just toss eggs out in the open. They hid them.
 
Really well.
 
My dad was a master at this. When he hid eggs, we would be lucky to find half of them.
 
There would be eggs hidden deep inside sticker bushes, in the tops of trees, buried in flower beds and even inside the glove compartment of the car, which was locked.
 
My parents would hide all those colorful eggs we had decorated while we stayed inside the house, arguing about who would find the most.
 
When they were finished, we kids would run out of the house like escaped prisoners and scour every inch of our yard for those hidden eggs.
 
Especially the prize egg- the only one that was plastic- which held a five dollar bill. An unimaginable fortune to us back then.
 
We found most of the eggs, despite my father’s attempt to hide them in places that even the FBI would not dare look.
 
Afterwards, we’d all sit on the back porch and eat those eggs, tossing the shells to our chickens who seemed to be completely oblivious to the fact those little crunchy morsels had come out of their own butts.
 
I can imagine the horror on the faces of kids these days if you told them they were going to eat their Easter eggs.
 
That is unlikely in this world of vegan, gluten-free, low-carb keto meals of kale and tofu.
 
I doubt most little kids have ever even tasted a boiled egg. But we did and we loved them.
 
Maybe it was because we put in so much effort to find those dang eggs that they tasted so good. We’d peel them, dip them in salt and pop them in our mouths like they were made of ice cream.
 
It was an especially big treat when we peeled one of those eggs and the dye has leaked through the shell, turning the egg blue, yellow or even the dreaded muddy brown.
 
Those eggs seemed to taste even better for some reason.
 
And what we didn’t eat that afternoon, we would take to school the next day for lunch. Every kid did.
 
Easter would be over. We’d put away our baskets and leisure suits. Forgotten until next year.
 
And we would go back to playing our normal games. Cops and robbers. One-on-one football. Kick the can.
 
But every now and then, we’d find one of those decorated eggs hiding under a bush or in a rain gutter. It would have been days or even weeks since they had been hidden by our parents.
 
But we didn’t care. It was a special treat made even better because it has eluded us for so long.
 
So, we would find a shady spot, peel those old eggs, and you guessed it- we’d eat them.
 
Imagine how horrified today’s parents would be if they saw their little darlings out in the yard snacking on a month-old egg that had never seen the interior of a refrigerator.
 
They’d slap that egg out of their kid’s hand and take them directly to the hospital to have an emergency bowel resection.
 
But our parents didn’t seem to care if we got salmonella. As long as we didn’t throw up on the shag carpet in the living room.
 
Also lime green.
 
Most of the time, the eggs were fine. A little stale or with some green spots growing on them, but they went down without killing us.
 
But there was always this one egg that wasn’t fit for consumption. A few hours after munching on it in the backyard, that egg would come right back up the way it went down.
 
Imagine if your kids got sick from salmonella these days. Moms would march on Washington and testify before Congress asking the government to ban eggs.
 
Heck, they would probably manage to get Easter outlawed altogether.
 
But who cares, right? Nobody wants to dress up and take their kids to church on Easter anymore these days. Or any Sunday.
 
They miss the point of the holiday which has nothing to
do with the Easter Bunny or egg hunts.
 
It’s a special day because of one thing. The most important one thing that ever happened.
 
It was the day Jesus returned from death to demonstrate how much he loved us.
 
Even if we puked rotten eggs and wore a lime green leisure suit.
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One Arm

We planted Christmas trees this weekend.
 
Or as I call it, Opportunity #712 to try and kill myself.
 
For your folks who have followed my adventures the last few years, you know that I have come face-to-face with the Grim Reaper on many occasions. He has been trying to catch me so he could add another notch to his staff.
 
But, not today Satan. Not today.
 
For you non-holiday tree planting experts out there, let me share how it’s done.
 
Step number one: do whatever my wife tells me to do. Honestly, that’s rule number one everyday!
 
The ‘other’ rule number one is go pick up the trees. We used to drive up to this place near Macon to get the trees, but that place went out of business.
 
Now we get them closer to home so we save a whole butt-load of money in gas while pulling the horse trailer home.
 
I think we get about 8 mpg pulling that butt-load of trees. I used butt-lows twice and for you non-country folk that means a lot!
 
It’s when we get them home that the real fun begins. Not fun like laying on the beach in Cancun sipping on a margarita. More like the fun you have working on a chain gang.
 
My beautiful wife is adamant that her trees are planted in straight lines, like graph paper.
 
“If it’s not a right angle, it’s a wrong angle.”
 
She doesn’t say that but I know that is what she means. This is confirmed by the steely stare I get when I am not marking every tree exactly at seven feet apart.
 
Exactly!
 
To get those 7×7 grids absolute perfect requires a lot of work. And several slipped discs.
 
She has an elaborate system of marking the trees which starts with a long ‘measuring’ stick. She somehow gets the four corners of the grid in place- it’s like voodoo how she does it. I can’t explain it and even if I could, I can’t explain it.
 
Trade secret.
 
This ‘system’ includes lots of bending over, moving the measuring pole, pulling strings and hammering in stakes.
 
It is about this time that I begin to wish that Jesus would just go ahead and call me home. But He never does.
 
It’s like that verse from 2 Corinthians where Peter writes, “To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me.”
 
Bending over and pounding those stakes a few hundred times definitely keeps one humble.
 
Once the stakes are in place, string is run all around until we have a ‘perfect’ 7×7 grid spray painted on the ground. (*refer to paragraph 11 above)
 
By the time this is finished, I am usually laying in my back in the dirt, writhing in pain and pleading with God to send a lightning bolt from Heaven to end my misery.
 
I think He laughs at this request as all the cloud above me suddenly clear up.
 
When the hole locations are complete, then you have to pull everything up and move to the next field.
 
It’s sorta’ like building a house just so you know where your recliner is going sit. And then tearing it all down and starting somewhere else.
 
This misery doesn’t just affect me. I don’t know how many lidocaine patches I stuck on my wife’s back this weekend but I’m pretty sure she exceeded the recommendations on the package.
 
By Saturday night, she can no longer feel her legs.
 
And this is where the real fun begins. And you just thought all that bending over and pounding was a party!
 
This is when the holes must be dug. Or dugged? Who knows what the correct vernacular is?
 
For years, we have used a hand-held death machine to dig those 6-inch wide by 10-inch deep holes. Most people call it an auger.
 
I call it her getting back at me for everytime I forget to put the toilet seat down.
 
This contraption has a 520cc motor mounted on top with two small handles.
 
Coming out of the motor is a whirling rod of cold steel death that spins at approximately the same RPM of a Ferrari going 200mph.
 
That auger chews up everything in its path. And that includes your limbs if you are not vigilant.
 
I position the auger over the painted mark, hit the throttle and hope that the thing doesn’t spin me around like one of those old-fashioned merry-go-rounds
that we used to play on when I was at Shiver Elementary School.
 
You know the one. Four people get on the ‘platter’ while your so-called friends try to spin the thing so fast, the metal bars you are clutching melt.
 
Usually what happens is the poor little kid who doesn’t have enough upper body strength goes flying head-over-heels into the neighboring monkey bars.
 
I still don’t understand how our teachers just stood back and watched as we murdered our friends.
 
People say ‘things were different back then.’ What they meant was that could you murder your classmate and then go back inside and have lunch.
 
No arrests or prosecutions. Only the strong survived.
 
Anyway, back to the present.
 
When you hit the throttle on that auger, you better have your feet planted solidly on the ground, you’ve got your tightly strained by a mouthguard, and your loins girded.
 
It’s like trying to pet a puma that is suffering from a bad case of PMS.
 
And heaven help you if you happen to hit an errant root while digging that hole. You just make sure your helmet is taut and your jockstrap with the protective cup is synched down really tight.
 
Like Vienna Boys Choir tight!
 
I guess you can still live a productive life is your left arm is ripped away from your body. My old neighbor did.
 
Mr. Clower was a crotchety old dude. For a long time, we’d walk by his little shack at the edge of the road and holler out a friendly hello.
 
His response would be something like Clint Eastwood would say in that movie, Gran Torino.
 
“Get off my lawn!”
 
But then my wife started showing some extra kindness to the old coot. She would take him food and would help him with yard work every now and then and the old geezer started to soften up a bit.
 
He needed help because Mr. Clower only had one arm. Well, that is not exactly the truth. He had one arm and a piece of another.
 
I never found out how he lost most of his left arm. It’s one of those things that you just don’t ask.
 
“Dang, dude! Where’d your arm go?”
 
I knew he had been in WW2 but he told me he was a mechanic so I figured it hadn’t been blown off when he was storming the beaches at Normandy.
 
So, it must have been a domestic accident. Something like using a chain saw.
 
Or an auger.
 
Anyway, as I started digging those holes for the Christmas trees, I thought about my former one-armed neighbor.
 
He had managed to do pretty much everything with just one arm. I went down there one day and Mr. Clower was cutting down a tree with a CHAINSAW.
 
Picture that: 80 year dude with just one arm using a chainsaw. How in the world has he even started it!
 
Needless to say, I took the chainsaw away from him and made him sit down while I finished the job.
 
So, even if the auger went south and decided to rip off one of my arms (or a leg), I could still feed myself.
 
Clower did.
 
So I keep digging. And keep up to date on the latest prosthetics technology because Christmas stops for no man.
 
Not even a man with only one arm!
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Second Chances

You don’t usually get a second chance in life.
 
Screw up and you’re done.
 
Don’t believe it? Go out tomorrow and rob a bank. And maybe shoot up the town during your getaway.
 
See if people ever look you the same way again.
 
Redemption is rare. And hard.
 
But when it happens, and it does every now and then, it makes all of us better.
 
The ones who need redemption. And the ones who give it.
 
I watched the movie The Color Purple this weekend. The old version with Oprah and Whoopi. Not the new one.
 
The entire movie is just incredible but there is one scene that is absolutely heart wrenching. Every time I watch it, I cry.
 
I can’t help it.
 
It makes me feel like there is hope. No matter what you’ve done. No matter how horrible.
 
It’s the scene near the end of the movie. If you’ve seen it before, you know exactly what scene I’m taking about.
 
It’s when Shug is singing at the little juke joint across the river and she hears the gospel music coming from her Daddy’s church across the field.
 
Suddenly, she starts walking toward the church. You don’t know what’s coming but when she walks down the aisle of that little church and into her father’s arms, it turns your heart to butter.
 
It doesn’t matter if you’re religious or not. It’s the moment she hugs her estranged father and he hugs her back that I lose it.
 
I want to be a man like that who forgives, no matter what.
 
It is one of the most incredible scenes of redemption ever filmed. And it got me to thinking about a case of redemption I have seen in person.
 
I told you that this world is hard and redemption rarely comes around anymore.
 
But in this case, it did.
 
And it gives me hope. For myself. For others. For everyone.
 
I don’t know when I met my friend, Eric. It was several years ago. He worked for one of my clients and was in the Rotary Club with me.
 
One thing that struck me about Eric was how he always seemed to be in a good mood. And that always helped me be in a better mood.
 
Eric was a former naval officer. He had a beautiful wife and two beautiful children.
 
To most people, it seemed he had the perfect life. One that most people would certainly envy.
 
But beneath that facade of happiness and success, Eric had a secret. A very dark secret.
 
He was an addict.
 
You would never know it to talk with him. He didn’t fit the persona of what most of us think an addict should look and act like.
 
You know. The poor guy sitting in a dark room smoking some brain-melting drug. Tattered clothes. Unshaven. Sores on his face.
 
But he was an addict nonetheless less. A functioning one.
 
Well, until he wasn’t.
 
It happened fast. I would see him at Rotary. Or at the office. Happy as ever.
 
And then he just disappeared.
 
He got fired from his job. And dropped off the earth.
 
I thought maybe he had moved to take a better job. Or had some family emergency which required him to move away while he helped an elderly loved one struggle through the last few weeks of their life.
 
But that isn’t what happened.
 
Eric had hit rock bottom. Most addicts do. Sooner or later.
 
At this point, most addicts have to make a choice. Continue to grovel in the mud. Or agree to treatment.
 
Eric chose the later and left town.
 
After a while, I forgot about him. I’m sure most folks did. Good riddance, right?
 
A year or so later and he came home. No longer consumed by drugs. Set free.
B
ut his reputation had not been scrubbed clean, like his body.
 
You see, people say they forget and forgive. But they never really do.
 
His friends had abandoned him. Many in his family had turned their backs on him.
 
He was clean. But he wasn’t.
 
You can’t just wash your reputation like you do your underwear. When it’s sullied, it usually stays that way.
 
He had to work hard to get people to trust him again. Some people never did.
 
Never would.
 
It was just punishment for what he had done. Who he had been.
 
It was at this point that most addicts revert back to old habits.
I
t’s like they have a rope tied around one ankle.
 
With every step forward, you’re pulled two steps back.
 
Most addicts, no matter how determined, can’t fight that pull backwards.
Eric did.
 
And slowly, people began to trust him again. Soured relationships were restored.
 
He became himself. Again.
 
This past Friday night, my lovely wife and I went over to Whigham to have dinner at Eric’s new restaurant. It’s not a fancy place. There’s no linen napkins or three forks lined up beside your china plate.
 
But Eric is an amazing cook and people come from everywhere to eat there.
 
Eric finally had what he had wanted all along. A place to call his own. And an opportunity to prove to everyone that he was a new man.
 
He spent the night, when he wasn’t tending the smoker or carrying plates of smoky brisket and turkey to the tables, shaking hands and hugging necks.
 
I’m sure there were people there who had once written him off as just another worthless addict. But instead of scowls, he was treated with love.
 
When we finished our dinner, my wife went to the front to pay. And I went to tell Eric how much we enjoyed it.
 
Instead of shaking his hand, I wrapped my arms around him and pulled him close. Then I whispered something in his ear that I am sure he thought when he was at the bottom, he would never hear again.
 
“I’m proud of you, Eric.”
 
He didn’t say anything but just smiled. He knew what I meant.
 
At the end of The Color Purple, there is this scene where Celie is reunited with her family. It’s another tear jerker.
 
Then the camera briefly turns back to Shug.
 
She’s crying. And beaming. And you know what she’s thinking. You can see it on her face.
 
What had seemed impossible had come true. Redemption.
 
Its rare. It’s hard.
 
But for anyone who knows Eric, you now know that he has found something rarely ever given in this life.
 
A second chance.
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I live a classy life.

Yesterday morning, my beautiful wife woke up and announced that she was going to the goat auction. And then she asked me if I wanted to go.
 
It was at this point that I realized how much I was in love with her.
 
For you ‘city folk’ who have never been to the goat auction, well, all I can say is that your life is unfulfilled.
 
We went out and hooked the livestock trailer to my truck and off we went.
 
My wife reminded me that I better pee before we go because their facility was a faded, old outhouse that hadn’t been dumped since Carter was president.
 
“Oh yeah, you also better eat something. I don’t have any cash and you know they don’t take cards at the snack bar.”
 
That’s was a real disappointed. When we got there, I browsed the menu written on a sheet of notebook paper tacked to the outside of the ‘Snack Bar.’
 
It was only slightly less clean than the outhouse in which I was not supposed to pee.
 
There was a choice of the corn dog ‘platter’ or a hot dog ‘platter’.
 
You could purchase each of the items individually but then you’d miss out on the stale bag of Better Value corn chips and a warm RC Cola.
 
I guess they must have lost their Michelin Star chef since the last time we were there.
 
So, for you people who have never been lucky enough to go to the goat auction, let me paint you a picture of the experience.
 
Imagine a bomb was thrown into a dumpster and spread used lumber, scrap metal, tools that don’t work and all types of miscellaneous crap all over the dirt yard of your hillbilly neighbor who hasn’t had any of his own teeth since 3rd grade and runs an illegal toxic dump.
 
That’s the goat auction.
 
We pulled up and I immediately noticed some little kid wearing nothing but a dirty diaper, playing in the dirt and eating goat poop next to the holding pens.
 
Yep, this was the place.
 
We brought our own chairs because, well frankly, I would not sit my ass, even covered, onto the collection of plastic chairs found at the dump and broken
BarcaLoungers with the springs poking out.
 
Now, for all you folks who don’t know the proper protocol for
such an event, let me give you some advice.
 
You never just sit on your broken plastic chair and wait for the auction to start.
 
First, you must browse the merchandise.
 
In our case, we were looking for a specific type of goat. But we were compelled to check out the other merchandise up for grabs.
 
First, we visited the shelter containing all types of fowl.
 
If you replaced the word ‘fowl’ with foul, you’d be on target.
 
The odor in that shelter was akin to the smell of what morticians pump out of the bodies of dead people.
 
My wife called it acrid.
 
She’s from Thomasville and has always thought she’s better than me.
 
The fowl barn is a series of long tables upon which sits a collection of ducks, geese, guinea fowls, turkeys, quail and every species of chicken known to man.
 
There were little black chickens, big red chickens and some chickens who were featherless.
 
I don’t know if they were ‘supposed’ to be that way or if they were involved some type of Chicken MMA.
 
If it could grow a feather, it was represented among this collection of animals stuffed into the cages and lined up like planes on a runway.
 
The cages were quite creative.
 
Somebody had made cages out of what looked like old razor wire reclaimed from our southern border. Others were fashioned from rusty chicken wire formed into every shape imaginable.
 
Some were round, some were conical. Most were shapes that I had never learned in my high school geometry.
 
I’m pretty sure the cage that held a whole covey of baby quail was a quadriparallelaheptatrapazoid.
 
Apparently a few of the folks who built those cages had studied structural engineering at Georgia Tech.
 
After we decided than none of these feathered critters would be coming to live a Chez Lovett, we moved around to the goat pens.
 
On the way, we passed a large crate holding a sickly looking bird. There was a sign on the front of the cage that read ‘Quarritine.’
 
I’m pretty sure they meant quarantine. But maybe it was an exotic type of bird for all I knew. The rare Australian Double Breasted Red-Beaked Turkey Buzzard.
 
I reckon because of his rare pedigree, the sickly bird deserved his own private suite.
 
We approached the goat pens and I wondered aloud if the fellow who built this ramshackle series of pens had gotten the death penalty when the code inspector showed up.
 
All of these pens were actual shapes I recognized. Squares, which was amazing since they looked to be made of old lumber strewn through the woods by a hurricane.
 
One pen was made of plywood. Another from tree branches.
 
There was also a big sign on the wall that said all of these animals has been recently inspected and declared ‘healthy’ by the USDA Animal Health
 
Inspector.
 
Poor fellow.
 
This ragtag collection on tiny cubes held goats and sheep of all varieties.
Some had long horns and beards. Others had floppy ears that hung down to the ground. Most goats were standing in their muddy cubes.
 
You know something must be disgusting for a goat not to lay down in it.
 
My wife found the goats she wanted to purchase and we returned to the auction area.
 
There were maybe 50 people crammed under a shelter built to hold 20. Most looked like they had not bathed since the last leap year.
 
I looked to my left and saw two little kids playing in the dirt. They were busy grabbing big handfuls of dirt and dumping them over each other’s heads.
 
That was okay with me. Kids love playing in the dirt. My kids did.
 
But this was dirt that overflowed out of the goat pens right behind them.
 
My wife nudged me and pointed at one of the kids who had stopped throwing dirt and was now sucking on her filthy fingers.
 
I gagged a little. So did my wife.
 
“Her mother must buy worm medicine by the shipping crate,” she said.
 
I was about to point out that Covid didn’t have a chance of killing that kid. She was immune to everything. But then a little boy who looked like he has been eating mud strolled up to the old man sitting in front of us.
 
“Papa, buy me a goat.”
 
The old man turned to Mud Mouth and said he was here to buy ducks.
 
The little boy poked his lips out and walked away- probably to eat another fresh handful of mud laced with a healthy dose of parasites and anthrax.
 
Sure beats the corn dog platter.
 
Finally, after 30 minutes of watching kids get parasites and our neighbors talking about how ‘purdy’ the goats were, the auctioneer stepped up on the small platform down front.
 
He immediately handed the microphone to a women wearing cut off blue jeans and an old Merle Haggard t-shirt who was selling raffles tickets.
 
It was loud under there so I wasn’t exactly sure what the raffle was for. I think the prize was either some used mobile home skirting or a new set of teeth. Just the uppers.
 
She then proceeded to walk through the crowd hawking the tickets. Up close, you could see that that she could have benefitted from that last prize.
 
The auction started and that’s when the real fun began.
 
Imagine fifty people yelling out bids, a thousand chickens screaming in the background and an angry goat up onstage with the auctioneer, trying to eat his shirt.
 
I imagined that this must be what hillbilly heaven looks like.
 
One of the goats that we were interested in came up for auction. I was about to bid on it when Mud Mouth sauntered back up to his gramps.
 
“Papa, please buy me a goat.”
 
“I told you I was here to get me a duck.”
 
The kid began to cry and I watched as the tears left little trails as they traveled down his muddy face.
 
I was so enthralled with watching this scene from rural Appalachia that I missed out on the goat.
 
Dangit!
 
Papa handed Mud Mouth a couple of dollars and told him to go get him a corn dog. Couldn’t afford a platter.
 
Guess the old man’s disability check was lost somewhere in the mail.
 
A few more goats came up for auction, the little kids continued to throw dirt on each other and Mud Mouth came back with his corn dog.
 
He chewed loudly with his mouth open right in front of me.
 
It was at this moment my wife said she was ready to go.
 
I looked over at the dirty little kids eating dirt and waved goodbye. One of them grinned and I saw dirt on his teeth.
 
On the way home, my wife looked over at me and said maybe we should start our livestock auction.
 
My answer was simple and to the point.
 
“Please let me die first.”
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The Cards

Somewhere in Grady County is buried a tin can. Inside of that tin card is a deck of cards.
 
They’re not playing cards. Or baseball cards.
 
Nope. They’re cards with the photos of naked women on them.
 
I spent ten years of my life looking for those cards.
 
They are still lost.
 
I’ve written before that I spent a lot of time in the woods while growing up. Me, my brother and my cousin who lived a few miles up the road.
 
That’s not true.
 
We didn’t spend ‘a little’ time in the woods. We basically lived there.
 
There were many days during my childhood when the only time I went back to my house was to sleep and make some sandwiches.
 
As soon as the sun rose, I was up and gone. Back to the woods.
 
I don’t know why my brother and I had such a fascination with the outdoors.
 
We didn’t hunt or fish. We had tried trapping a few animals so we could get rich by selling their hides.
 
That venture ended after an unsuccessful attempt to skin and cure a raccoon hide went very badly.
 
But that once botched foray into being rich fur traders didn’t keep us from living out our childhoods in the forest.
 
Mostly we spent our time gigging frogs, catching snakes and trying to cure ‘rabbit tobacco’ into a state where it was bearable to smoke.
 
It never was.
 
But there was one day when I was maybe six or seven years old when our young lives changed.
 
That was the day my cousin showed up with the cards.
 
At first, we thought they were just playing cards. We had played many a game of Go Fish and War at the little camp spot where we kept our tent set up all the time.
 
But these were not playing cards.
 
My cousin never said where he got the cards but we didn’t care. If we got caught, all fingers would point towards him. He was one and two years older than us so we could always claim he corrupted my brother and I.
 
He pulled something from his back pocket and told us that he brought a very special surprise.
 
The cards were wrapped in tin foil like a cheese sandwich. But there was no cheese in that foil. There was something a lot more tasty
 
Naked ladies.
 
Now at this point in my life, I had never seen a human female naked. Well, other than my four year old sister. And that was not very titillating.
 
These women were quite different than my sister.
 
For one thing, the women on those cards had breasts. All kinds of breast.
 
Some big, some small. Some pointing towards the sky. Some pointed towards the ground.
 
I had no idea breasts came in so many different sizes and shapes.
 
Now, believe me when I say that the women on those cards were not all ‘lookers.’ Many were well past the age when you should be taking your clothes off.
 
But they were girls and they were naked and although I was far from puberty,
 
I knew that looking at them was very wrong.
 
I just didn’t know why.
 
We spent many days sitting around the campsite looking at the cards and comparing the different photos.
 
It didn’t take long for us to get bored looking at the same black and white photos of middle-aged women with bodies that were not quite good enough to be in Playboy but who wanted to get their nakedness photographed nonetheless.
 
My cousin said he could not take the cards home. If his parents found them anywhere on him or in his room, he would be kicked out of the house and declared a pervert.
 
We were not about to take those racy photos back to our house. If my mom found that foil package of dirty pictures under my mattress, I’m pretty sure I would have been sent off to a boys-only military boarding school.
 
We were in a pickle, Dick.
 
If we wanted to keep those cards a secret, they would have to be hidden. And hidden good.
 
So we settled on a plan. We would wrap the cards back in the tin foil and put them into a metal tin that we kept our old rabbit tobacco in and bury them.
 
But it had to be somewhere that nobody would ever find.
“We need to make a map,” said my cousin. “A secret map that only we can read.”
 
He had apparently watched too many episodes of the Saturday morning TV show, Ranger Hal.
 
We thought that was a splendid idea. Well, at first.
 
We spent the rest of the day arguing about where to bury the tin. My brother wanted to choose a spot near our campsite so we could find it and dig it up more easily.
 
My cousin disagreed and said we should bury it deep in the woods.
 
I was six so I didn’t get a vote.
 
They finally settled on a spot far from our little tent. It would be easy to find, they said, because we would have a secret map.
 
And we did. My cousin pulled out a piece of notebook paper and a pencil and we marked off where to find it.
 
Ten paces this way. Twenty paces that way. My cousin insisted on making the map as complicated as possible, just in case someone found it and tried to steal our treasure.
 
And it was indeed complicated.
 
By the time we finished and dug a hole to drop in the metal tin, we couldn’t even see our campsite anymore and the paper was crisscrossed with a tangle of lines, directions and a big ‘X’ to mark the spot.
 
We patted each other on the backs for our ingenuity and went home.
 
The next weekend, we decided to head back out into the woods to ‘dig up’ our booty. There was only one problem: my cousin lost the map.
 
We had spent the entire afternoon creating a complicated map of where we buried the naked lady cards and then my nitwit imbecile of a cousin went and LOST IT!
 
My brother and I considered burying him in the woods. Without a map.
 
And then we came to our senses and decided our energy would best be spent not murdering our cousin but trying to find where we hid the tin.
 
We combed every square inch of that forest and found nothing. Well, we did find some fresh new rabbit tobacco. But we no longer cared about that.
 
We wanted to see some boobies.
 
So we spent the entire next day with a shovel digging beside every tree for a five mile radius.
 
Nothing.
 
After weeks of searching for the tin, we finally just gave up.
 
Well, they did. I didn’t.
 
For the next ten years, I dug up about 90% of those woods and found nothing.
 
I don’t know why. I no longer cared about seeing those old boobs. I just wanted to know where that damn tin box is.
 
And I still do.
 
I had to meet a client in Ochlocknee a few days ago and rode by the old spot where our house once was- it had burned down when I was in college.
 
I actually stopped, got out and walked around the old place. And for a brief moment, I had the urge to walk across the road into the woods to search for that tin box with those boobie pictures.
 
I knew it would be a waste of time but I didn’t care. This was like finding Big Foot to me.
 
Maybe I’ll get a shovel and go back. Maybe not.
 
But if I do go back and I do find that old buried tin, I know exactly what I’m going to do with those old, faded naked girl cards .
 
I’m going to show them to my cousin’s mother.
 
That’ll teach him for losing that map.

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