The best thing about writing these things is hearing from you. Good or bad. I appreciate it. You read these and think I’ve written them but most of the time, you have.
I will try to do better in 2018. We had an interesting run in 2017. Let’s review.
We started off by meeting Gracie Lou, a Maltese, which is a small white kick-me dog. (A “kick-me dog” is around your feet ALL THE TIME.) She came from Mississippi to live with us. She is in my lap and licking my pocket now as if there is a chicken wing inside, which is irritating. But I do love her. Today she went to the vet for shots, then to the beauty shop. I took her both places. I grew up with Big Dogs. What have I become?
We survived a Bacon Shortage Possibility in February, a pork bellies deal. And my friend Rammer, the play-by-play guy of the St. Louis basketball team and a former sports anchor at KTAL-TV in Shreveport, survived their entire team bus getting stolen while they played a game at St. Bonaventure. They lost the game — and their bus. But we didn’t lose bacon. The price has gone up a bit, but she’s still flowing free and easy from pig farms to Super 1 to my kitchen.
We saw a lot of good community theatre: “Nice Work If You Can Get It.” “Pageant.” “The Miracle Worker.” “A Comedy of Tenors.” “OLIVER! The Musical.” Some dinner theatre at STEM in Shreveport. It is fascinating what people can do. Give them a little encouragement and direction and love and...you just never know.
We battled through some losses: Mel Tillis. Jim Nabors. Don Williams. The passing of Gregg Allman — I’d forgotten he’d been married to Cher? — spawned a Top 10 Southern Rock Songs of All-Time list. “Ramblin’ Man” was No. 2, and “Midnight Rider” was No. 1, and the list changes depending on your mood.
One of my most bittersweet memories was going home to Carolina to find that the Dairy Maid had closed. Hurt me. Maybe we grew up in different generations and certainly in different towns but we still had our “go to” spots, the place where they made you milkshakes in cups that read “Milk Line” and “Syrup Line” on the outside of them and they served you French fries in a tiny red-and-white tray/bucket.
“You pulled up on your bike and Mrs. Sarah Joe (Mr. Carmichael’s wife) or Betty Sue Moody or Mrs. Eutha or, if it was your extra-lucky day, Mrs. Edna Barfield or Mrs. Albertine Sanderson, would pull a little screen up from an elbow-high window and ask, “What do you want, honey?,” and you’d order, still on your bike, and then bike-walk to the shade of an umbrella in the center of one of the few outdoor round metal tables. There you’d wait, wait like it was Christmas Eve, for your milkshake, prepared with hands born to handle Dixie cups and dairy.”
The Phillips 66 was in the same parking lot in this town 40 miles from an interstate.
Went to three weddings this year. Cried at all three. Getting older, I guess. Defenses not as strong. Will go to another one on Cinco de Mayo when my step-human gets hitched. I’m sure I will cry at that one too. Starting on Cinco de Quatro.
Met Tommy Suggs this year, who was the South Carolina quarterback in the first college game I ever went to. (What was your first game?) Some guys in my church back home took me. I was 6 or 7 and Suggs and the Gamecocks won at Clemson and all that game did was change my life. (DesignatedWriters.com starts soon and a story about it will be there.) That was the mid-’60s. I finally got to thank Tommy Suggs this football season, 50 falls later, when Louisiana Tech played in Columbia. It’s never too late.
I got a ticket for not wearing a seat belt. We wrote about the Worst Drivers: (The Parking Lot Pollyanna, the Turn Signal Simpleton, the Merge Bandits, and the Left Land Losers. Should have added the No-Seat-Belt-Wearers.) And the Houston Astros— wait for it — won a spectacular World Series!
I had to go to a fourth-grade class one day and a precious little girl, snug in a plaid winter coat, raised her arm and said to me, “May I ask a question off topic?” This is how fourth-graders talk? There is hope for the future.
Good times. In the words of our friend Don Webb, educator, pastor, former captain in the Queen’s navy and one of my favorite authors, I hope this is Our Best Year Yet.
Contact Teddy at teddy@latech.edu
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