Kathy Sue Loudermilk, I Love You: A good beer joint is hard to find and other facts of life

by Lewis Grizzard

  “I need your response no later than two weeks from Friday. Please double-space and try to avoid typographical errors as the instructor counts off for that.”

  The student who wrote that letter will probably grow to be a good columnist. Getting other people to do your work is a cornerstone of this profession.

  Since it is impossible for me to answer all such inquiries, I have decided today to interview myself on the subject of writing a column for the benefit of interested students and my boss.

  I know my boss is interested because just the other day he asked me, “Grizzard, how can you do this to me five days a week?”

  Here, then, is the interview, conducted in my office, which is located near the men’s rest room and which recently got new carpet the color of river water near a chemical dump. I am using an IBM Selectric II typewriter, which makes strange sounds like a semi hauling hogs through Holly Springs, Mississippi, on a hot July afternoon:

  What does a semi hauling hogs through Holly Springs, Mississippi, on a hot, July afternoon sound like?”

  “Grrrrrrrrrrrooooooooink!”

  When your IBM Selectric II typewriter makes that sound, what do you think of?

  The odor of overcrowded hogs in a steam bath and possible death by electrocution.

  Has anybody ever suffered serious injury or even death in an accident involving an electric typewriter?

  Yes. One day a skinny religion reporter got his tie hung in the paper roller of his electric typewriter. In a vain attempt to remove it, he rolled his head into his machine and was typed to death by a lower case ‘j’ and an out-of-control ampersand.

  Do readers sometimes call and suggest column ideas to you?

  Every day. Recently, an anonymous caller suggested I do a column on the most handsome, best-dressed sportcaster on Atlanta television.

  Did you follow up on the suggestion?

  Of course not. I knew it was Harmon the minute he mispronounced “Robert Hall.”

  As a columnist, do you have opportunities for exciting travel and adventure?

  You betcha. Just in the last two months, I have been to Memphis and Birmingham. Memphis was closed after dark and under martial law, but the hotel in Birmingham had one of those neat, revolving restaurants like the Regency Hyatt in Atlanta. Unfortunately, the one in Birmingham was in the basement.

  Last year, I got to go to the Indianapolis 500 automobile race. What an interesting event that was. It was the most mental illness I have seen at one time.

  Approximately, what are your working hours?

  I am on call twenty-four hours a day. No story is ever too big or too small for a good columnist. If the bartender forgot to tell you the office called, however, it’s not your fault.

  Who are the most difficult people to interview?

  Those whose names recently appeared in the obituary column, anybody in Harrison’s on Friday night with a wedding ring in his pocket, and Korean soccer players.

  Is it a strain on your health to write five columns a week?

  Absolutely not. I have migraine headaches, stomach pains, dizzy spells, nightmares, hallucinations, ingrown toenails, smoker’s cough, and my back is stiff. Other than that, I am in perfect health for a sixty-five-year-old malaria victim.

  Is it necessary to drink to be a good columnist?

  That is a common myth, but a young person setting out on a career as a columnist should avoid drinking at all costs. It is certainly not necessary to drink to be a good columnist. It is a great help on the days you are a bad one, however.

  In summary, then, what is the most difficult part of writing a daily column: (a) the research; (b) the actual writing; (c) the need for a constant flow of the creative juices; or (d) crazies threatening to break your hands?

  (E) Admitting to myself I can’t hold down a regular job.

  LIVER IS A FRAUD

  EATING USED TO BE so simple. A couple of eggs with grits, bacon, toast and coffee in the morning, a quick hamburger and fries at noon, and evening was your basic meat and potatoes.

  Give me something with character in the evenings. A steak. Pork chops. Fried chicken. My mother would occasionally try to slip liver into my diet.

  “Eat liver, live longer,” she would say.

  I’m still taking my chance. Who wants a long life that includes eating liver? I don’t even like to be in the same room with it.

  After I left my mother’s table, eating became a bit more complicated. Restaurant food can make eating more of a chore than a joy.

  When I lived in Chicago, I nearly starved. Chicago is filled with ethnic restaurants that are fun once. But man cannot live on a steady diet of veal marsala and things that still have their heads and eyes.

  He must also have cornbread and collards and an occasional barbecue pork-pig sandwich. Otherwise, scurvy and rickets are distinct possibilities.

  Today, eating has become a major problem. That is because all the things we used to think were good for us are actually bad for us. Like light bread and biscuits. Light bread and biscuits, somebody told me, are fattening, have no food value and can lead to heart attack and cancer. Say it ain’t so.

  The same goes for too much milk and eggs. They cause cholesterol and cholesterol causes your arteries to clog and clogged arteries are one-way tickets to the coronary wing.

  You have probably heard bacon and hamburgers cause cancer. My doctor told me not to eat pork. That’s a problem. A week without barbecue, and I hallucinate and get shortness of breath.

  I was hoping they would find something wrong with liver. I always figured it probably caused the spread of communism if nothing else.

  “Eat liver, live longer,” said my doctor, the dirty pinko.

  What we are supposed to be eating today are natural foods. Foods that have not been processed. Foods that have no chemical additives and preservatives. Foods that give us bulk and fiber.

  All that sounds like good advice on how to keep your lawnmower engine in tune, but I decided to at least seek more information on the matter.

  I have a friend who eats nothing but natural foods. Actually, he doesn’t eat. He grazes. I went to him for advice.

  “Breakfast,” he said, “is the most important meal of the day. I eat natural cereals with low-fat milk and no sugar.

  “Or, I mix natural yogurt, a banana, a teaspoon of raw honey and miller’s bran together. It gives me enough food value to last me until lunchtime when I eat raw vegetables and nuts.

  “The dinner meal is usually a large salad, a bowl of celery or asparagus soup, a glass of natural fruit juice and maybe a piece of cheese. The cheese is optional.”

  Never introduce a man with a diet like that to your houseplants. I know horses and goats who eat better.

  My friend explained further about people in other parts of the world whose diets include nothing but natural foods. I remembered the yogurt commercials on television. Eat a lot of yogurt and grow up to be a 112-year-old Russian. Who needs it?

  “Don’t laugh,” he said. “Cultures whose diets are totally natural have no traces of heart disease or cancer or other such diet-related diseases. If Americans would turn to natural foods, it would do wonders for the health of our nation.”

  That, and eat plenty of liver, I added.

  “No liver,” he said. “Liver stores all the residues and chemicals the animal takes in from eating his own processed foods. I wouldn’t touch liver.”

  I knew it! Anything that tastes as bad as liver has to be the devil’s own doing. Finally, I am absolved. Liver is a lying, indigestible fraud.

  Praise the Lord, and pass the roots and berries.

  MY HOUSE AND A WORD OR TWO ABOUT CATS

  I HAVE LIVED IN apartments most of my adult life. I have lived in apartments all over Atlanta. I have lived in two different apartments in Chicago.

  My first apartment in Chicago was on the fifth floor of a five-floor building. I had space on the roof and an excellent view of the alley behind the building.

  Space
on the roof is important in Chicago because that is where you go for cookouts and parties with other residents the two months you wouldn’t freeze to death or be blown half way to Gary, Indiana by the wind.

  Cookouts and parties on a roof in Chicago are equivalent to cook outs and parties in the backyard in Atlanta. Such occasions are more of an adventure on a roof, however, because you can’t get wall-eyed and fall off a backyard.

  A good view of the alley is also something nice to have in a Chicago apartment because otherwise you might go days without seeing a single mugging.

  My second apartment in Chicago was on the second floor. The people downstairs had cats. Cats are snooty and wouldn’t fetch a stick on a bet. They also scratch. I dislike cats.

  One night a cat belonging to the people downstairs came into my apartment while I was having dinner. It jumped onto the table and walked in the mashed potatoes. I attempted to drown the cat in the gravy. Never attempt to drown a cat in gravy.

  The people downstairs refused to pay for the stitches.

  Several years ago, I lived in an apartment on the south side of Atlanta near the airport. It had one of those fancy, English names like Hampshire on the Lake. Or Oyster on the Half-Shell. I forget which.

  Regardless, the noise from airplanes landing and taking off from Hartsfield gave me migraine headaches, and the first time it rained, the apartment flooded.

  Pleas to the resident manager’s office for help and a pump went unheeded. Finally, I wrote her a letter. “I can no longer live in this carpeted rice paddy,” is what I wrote. She finally came over to inspect my apartment and brought her cat. It drowned.

  My last apartment was on the northwest side of the city, and the most interesting thing about it was the pool and the girl who sat by it wearing nothing but two strategically placed R.C. caps and a polkadot loin cloth.

  My apartment pool was also where off-duty airline stewardesses came to sunbathe. The girl with the two R.C. caps and the polkadot loin cloth was not an airline stewardess, however.

  She was an ex-biology teacher who got fired for adding new dimensions to show-and-tell time.

  The purpose for all this background on my apartment living adventures is to tell you I have finally given up apartment living, not to mention another deposit.

  I bought a house. One with windows and doors and a leaking faucet in the bathtub. One with trees in the yard and squirrels and birds in the trees. One with gutters to clean and grass to cut. One with taxes and insurance and a high interest rate and dogs who roam in the yard and who had a dinner party in the first batch of garbage I dumped in my very own curbside garbage container.

  One my old furniture insults. I have bought automobiles for what a couch and a coffee table costs these days. One with windows to wash and carpets to clean and leaves to rake.

  One with bathroom tile that needs grouting. Until I bought a house, I thought grouting was something only consenting adults should do and only with the lights off.

  But one the sun shines into in the mornings. And one I hoped for and saved for and looked high and low for.

  One I wouldn’t mind sharing someday.

  Maybe I’ll buy a cat.

  DON’T GET GYPPED WHEN YOU NEED A CRYPT

  I STARTED NOT TO write this column. It’s about cemetery plots. This is only my third sentence, but I’ve already got the creeps.

  When I was a kid, the old folks used to gather and talk about their cemetery plots. I would leave the room.

  When I returned, they had usually progressed to the Fire on Judgment Day. I would leave the room again.

  “Where is your plot, Myrtle?” one of the old folks would ask another.

  “On the hill.”

  “Not much shade up there,” the dialogue would continue.

  “It’s peaceful, though. And I overlook the front of the church.”

  “I’m under the oak tree, next to Maude Bates.”

  “Won’t it be cold in the wintertime?”

  “I’m wearing my wool suit.”

  “The gray one?”

  “Gray with black checks.”

  “You’ll be pretty as a picture. If you don’t break out.”

  “Why should I break out?”

  “Wool. Maude Bates wore wool, you know. She broke out some thing awful.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Her sister Ruby told me. Ruby’s on the hill next to me. We’re wearing cotton prints.”

  I can take almost anything else. Dandruff, roaches in the sink, your last proctoscope examination. But not cemetery plots. Cemetery plots are personal, like your underwear size.

  And deliver me from advertisements about cemetery plots and their accompanying paraphernalia. Classified ads in the newspaper sell plots like used cars:

  “WESTVIEW—4-grave. Terrace B. Shaded, Curbside. Reasonable. Leaving state. Quick sale.”

  What’s so important about being “curbside”? You’re going to catch a bus?

  Another ad caught my eye the other day:

  “DAWN MEMORIAL, (2) plots with Vaults, markers and perpetual maintenance. Must sell. Need money!”

  That’s obvious. Anybody needing money bad enough to hock his own burial vault and marker is one broke hombre.

  Television commercials for cemetery plots are even worse. There was the one I borrowed from to begin this column: “We started not to make this commercial,” the announcer would open.

  And for good reason. It stunk.

  “. . . But the Deep Six Burial Company wants you to plot now for what the future holds for all of us. Don’t be left out in the cold when that time comes. You and your loved ones will be eternally grateful you acted now.”

  I would be eternally grateful if I never saw that commercial again.

  Some things simply shouldn’t be hard-sold. Cemetery plots head the list. The announcer is somber-slick. The music is sleepy-soft. The plan is “Pay now, die later.”

  Any day, I expect a commercial for cemetery plots with a singing jingle:

  “Pay just two-ninety-five

  While you’re still alive

  So you won’t get gypped

  When you need a crypt.”

  I admit I’m easily spooked when it comes to this matter. And I admit I’m in the same mortal boat with everybody else. I will, in fact, need a place to lay me down for the ages.

  But I don’t want to be reminded of that unsettling fact as I sit in my own living room.

  Among other things, it is depressing and causes me to break out like Maude Bates, rest her woolly soul.

  I DON’T HAVE ANY CHILDREN

  WE WERE ALL CLOSE once. I thought it had been six, maybe seven years. Somebody else said it had been more like twelve or thirteen.

  It was a chance reunion. There was some beer, and we told a few of the old stories again. One was about the time we had Ben E. King at the spring formal at a big, downtown hotel.

  A fight broke out. We couldn’t remember who started it or who won, but we did recall a lot of glass breaking and being asked never to come back to that particular big, downtown hotel.

  They all introduced me to their wives, none of whom seemed particularly interested in hearing a few of the old stories again. Then they pulled out their wallets and showed me pictures of their children.

  That’s exactly what I needed to see, pictures of their children, but I always make polite remarks at a time like that.

  “She’s a sweetheart.”

  “This is when she was an angel in the church play.”

  “Looks just like you.”

  “His teacher says he’s the brightest kid in her class.”

  “Fine-looking young man.”

  “He plays fullback.”

  They asked if I had any children. Somebody will always ask that, and I will normally answer while staring at the floor.

  “No, I don’t,” I will say. What am I doing? Apologizing? Why do I always feel like I need to offer an explanation?

  I don’t have any child
ren because I just don’t have any. We talked about it. We even tried a couple of times, but nothing ever happened.

  And by that time, it was obvious that trying to have a child, under the circumstances, would be ... stupid. I think that’s exactly the word I used. “Stupid.”

  I have been congratulated often for my farsighted approach to the situation.

  “You’re better off,” people have said to me.

  I’ve also been told I was “lucky.”

  “You’re lucky you never had any children. When you have children, it just makes things a lot worse.”

  I think it was one of my aunts who said, “At least there weren’t any little children to get hurt.”

  But I like children. Maybe that’s a little strong. I don’t have anything against children, and from what limited knowledge I have of them, there is apparently at least some appeal to their company.

  They seem to forgive easily, like dogs, and I am impressed by that.

  When they first awaken, they look around for somebody to hold them. I know the feeling.

  Thunder frightens children. I’m still not at peaceful terms with thunder, either.

  Children give you a fair shot before they decide they don’t like you.

  They look fresh and cute dressed up, especially when they are dressed up and walking into a church holding their mother’s hand.

  Children think it’s a big deal when you give them a quarter.

  I’ve always wanted to teach a little boy which end of a baseball bat to hold. You would think little boys would be born with that knowledge, but they aren’t.

  One of the men who was showing me pictures of his children said when you have children you hear the word, “daddy,” about a thousand times a day.

  That can’t be all bad.

  Once I took a friend’s child on a carnival ride, the Octopus. In the middle of the ride, she said she had to go to the bathroom. I explained the Octopus does not stop when you have to go to the bathroom.