All These Years Later Lewis Grizzard Still Shows Up In the Craziest of Ancient Places

You find the strangest things when your editor takes drunk for an extended period, leaving you to your own devices with a lot of time on your hands cooped up and qualrantined due to widespread panic.

One example would be a website full of fond recollections about Lewis Grizzard that is somehow still active but has no new content since 2004. That means someone is paying the bill to keep it plugged in and the beer cold but they have had nothing to add for 16 years.

It is like this all over the internet. Lewis died in 1994, but you can find his not always flattering obituaries in often snotty newspapers from New York to Los Angeles. And these 25+ years later, where would you rather live, LA, NYC or Georgia?

Yet even fond Grizzard tributes mysteriously float on, sustained like the one below by Gawd who knows who.

North Georgia Trout Online sounds like a fun place or group or organization or whatever. It's also a good play on words about having a trout on the line, which I have never managed to do at least in Georgia. 

My flies and lures get snagged in trees unreachable with anyone casting but me. Trout actually pop their heads out of rivers while treading water against stiff currents to laugh at me when I trout fish.

This more poorly educated trout in Lousiana was not so snarky or fortunate. I held it as such acting like I was a girl and touching trouts with bare hands is icky.

In truth I romanced that trout for the holidays. Then I ate her.

But I digress.

When you go to North Georgia Trout Online dot org it takes you to this forum where I was hoping to see almost nekkid hot young Greek women wearing skimpy togas. But it is not that kind of forum.

http://www.georgia-outdoors.com/forum

It has not been much of any kind of forum for going on a decade and a half. When you go to the "About" page you get this:

WHY WE DO WHAT WE DO

is followed by

"Adobe Flash Player is blocked"

Whatever they do for why ever they might do it, someone should unblock that stinkin Adobe Flash Player. Otherwise how might almost nekkid hot young Greek women flash me if they wanted to?

But to put a merciful end to all this digressing, lets get to the 2004 Lewis Grizzard memory lane fond recollections we started writing about before we digressed.

There might be some formatting errors when I publish this. No telling what might happen if you remove formatting from crap people posted so long ago. It might unleash some perilous virus. 

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03-20-04, 08:02 AM

Weyman C. Wannamaker Jr., a great American; Kathy Sue Loudermilk, who "made a tight sweater seem much more than a woolen garment".

I really miss you! And, Lewis, my favorite Bulldawg of all times, I truly miss you. Thanks for all the books!

Regrets, I've had a few, but then, too few to mention

03-20-04, 09:40 AM

Back in the late 70's I was stationed out west in the Air Force. My mother started sending me these crazy books by this guy named " Lewis Grizzard " Seemed like I would either cry or rotflmao at every story. It didn't take long for me to realize it was a thinly veiled plot by mama to make me homesick for the south.

Thank the Lord for Lewis and Harold's Barbecue !

No, no, he didn't slam you, he didn't bump you, he didn't nudge you... he " rubbed " you. And rubbin, son, is racin'. Harry from " Days of Thunder "


03-21-04, 08:28 AM

"Won't You Come Home Billy Bob Bailey"
"Kathy Sue Loudermilk, I Love You"
"Don't Bend Over in the Garden, Granny, You Know Them Tators Got Eyes"
"Elvis is Dead and I Don't Feel So Good Myself"
"Shoot Low Boys, They're Ridin' Shetland Ponies"
"They Tore Out My Heart and Stomped That Sucker Flat"
"If I Ever Get Back to Georgia, I'm Gonna Nail My Feet to the Floor"
"Chili Dogs Always Bark at Night"
"When My Love Returns From the Ladies Room, Will I Be Too Old to Care"
"If Love Were Oil, I'd Be About a Quart Low"
"My Daddy Was a Pistol and I'm a Son of a Gun"

Many of his books were compilations from his syndicated column in the AJC. I couldn't wait for the next book just because I wanted to see what the title would be.


03-21-04, 01:43 PM

I taught English for several years, and inside that process I both studied and taught Mark Twain as one of the greatest authors in American Literature. He had a gift for writing - more correctly story telling - that allowed him to spin a good yarn wrapped as his forum for commenting on the human condition. If you have not done so, I highly recommend you read 'Huckleberry Finn' as an adult and look at Twain's description of the times through the eyes of the inhabitants. And hopefully you will recognize that all those characters are still with us today! Another great piece is 'The Man Who Corrupted Hadleyburg'. With this short story, Twain pokes his finger right in the eye of the self-rightous.

Were I still teaching, or if I were to teach again, I would create a literature study segment that starts with Mark Twain and migrates into Lewis Grizzard as a continuum of classic American literature. Grizzard had the same gift as Twain for talking about our lives with humor and candor, a rare combination. You can observe the nature of Twain's works changing as he matured, and you can see the beginnings of that with Grizzard before his life ended so early. For a good example of Grizzard with a little more edge, try 'They Tore My Heart Out and Stompled That Sucker Flat'.

I think my all time Grizzard favorite is the story of the south Georgia funeral and the tradition of sitting up all night with the dead. Of course there is the ensuing thunderstorm. If you don't know this story I won't spoil it for you and if you do, you're already laughing. And perhaps best of all, Grizzard recorded this story on one of his albums. What a great teaching aid that would be!

The night Grizzard died, I happened to be across the street at the Emory Emergency Room on another matter. Knowing the end was near, I stepped out into the night air, looked at the hospital windows across the street, and told Lewis goodbye.


03-22-04, 01:49 PM

My favorite Grizzard quote concerned a complaint that the AJC was a very biased newspaper and would oftentimes bend the truth. Lewis came to his employer's defense regarding the Atlanta Constitution, "Heck, it only costs a quarter. If you want accuracy....it'll be a buck-twenty-five!"

Here's another Grizzard gem regarding college football recruiting:

The Season for Child-Snatchers
By Lewis Grizzard
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published: 1978

It was all over the Sunday paper about the recruiting of young athletes to play football at large universities in the region. It's that season. Children are snatched away from their mothers' arms back home in Twobit County, and the next thing you know, the Head Coach is saying, "Ol' Dram Bowie from down in Twobit County is the finest prospect since Jiggy Smaha." Which brings up that musical question, has anybody seen Jiggy Smaha lately?


03-25-04, 10:27 PM

To this day I carry a laminated copy of his column "What my Daddy gave to me was a love of baseball" in my briefcase. Truly the Southern male's poet laureate.and the greatest Dawg fan ever.

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I do not name these nostalgic waxers due to the remote chance they might sue me or one day fix that Adobe player so I might get flashed by hot young Greek women in togas.

With that I must get back to work trying to write something no one else in the world has yet written about the coronavirus. Hey, I just figured out Corona is a beer! Maybe I can write funny stuff using a play on words.

Surely no one has thought of that.

https://www.amazon.com/Lewis-Grizzard-Dawg-That-Hunt/dp/1795440279

Peter Stoddard

678-725-5889

stoddardmedia@gmail.com