memories « Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

memories

Young at heart, old of ear

Little Jimmy’s grandmother took him to the park after a long day of kindergarten. “Doesn’t it look like an artist painted the scenery? God painted this just for you,” she said.

“Yes” Jimmy said, “God did it and he did it left handed.”

“What makes you think God is left handed?”

“Well” Jimmy said, “we learned in Sunday School that Jesus sits on God’s right hand!”

Silly, but I love that joke. Always made me wonder if a heavenly hand could fall asleep. Someone could blame a lot of problems on that. Others would probably shake their head and agree. Burning needles in an appendage takes it out of a guy, they’d think, I can relate to that.

Dear parents that owe child support, pay your bills. Not only are you depriving your child, you’re embarrassing yourselves:

The best part is the deputy sheriff in his Auburn shirt. They went all out on this sting, except for the location. I mean, “You’ve won tickets to the game of the year! Come down to this abandoned granary to collect!”

You can tell football season is upon us. The team is practicing, students are starting to move back to town, and the summer term has wound down. We’re shopping for shirts. The Yankee wants a jersey for her birthday, and she has numbers in mind. The university seems to be marketing just three jersey numbers this season, and one of them is the one she wants. So that works out well. We hit a few stores yesterday, as I mentioned, looking for the right size and number combination. There were a few more stores today.

But first, the university library, where there is a documentary of some heft that must be obtained. We found it and, then, on the way out, walked by part of the Toomer’s Corner displays. These are the things people left after their poisoning was announced. How weird that still sounds:

They’re going to allow fans to roll the trees again this fall, which has a “roll ’em while you got ’em” feel. I’m not interested. Having had my share, and stood under the old trees during two conference championships, two undefeated seasons and a national championship I’ve more than had my fill. But here’s my feeling:

Yeah, they’re trees, and there are worse crimes against humanity than a crime against a local icon, but if you deprive children of their part of a long legacy we should find a small space under a heavy, cramped jail for you. But that’s just me.

Here’s another neat one from the display:

Here’s more on the collection, including a few other artifacts. The archivists say no one has ever had to preserve something like toilet paper before. The things we celebrate are temporary, the hard part is making the memories last forever.

They are getting the stadium ready. In a month more than 87,000 people will be inside there. It is silly and spectacular and true:

Came home to do productive things. Planned out a presentation for next week, tinkered with the video chat feature of Google Plus. We are living in the future. Somehow the economy didn’t seem so bad in our imaginations, but still, video chat across two states. This is a step up from last week’s test of the platform, where four of us chatted in one room. And by room I mean our living room. It was delightfully geeky.

Jeremy, the host of The War Eagle Reader stopped by for a chat. Did you know he edited the Maple Street Press? Did you know I’m in that magazine? It isn’t bad, though all agree the photo selections and the cutlines could be better. The content, though, is insightful.

He loaned me a book, which I am interested to read. First I must put it on top of the To Read stack and finish the other two in progress. Once upon a time I’d read three at a time. Now I do well to get in two. Seems I’m reading lots of other things, too. Makes me wonder what this does to one’s reading comprehension. Is it really useful if I can later only say “This one book I read … ” or “I recall in … some study or another … ”

Now, I wrote last month about my joy of books, but the one thing that could replace that would be the convenience and joy of search. If I could put everything in a reader and then refer back to the term or author or time I was reading the thing … now that would be something.

And according to the Booth Theory of Commercial development, Google or Apple has that in R&D right now. And when it comes out in six months I’ll only need a way to transfer everything I’ve ever read, ever, into the reader for cross tab indexing.

Well, maybe I could leave out the Black Stallion series and various old Robin Hood tales. Who needs those now? I’ve always questioned the fingers wrapped in the horse’s mane. And the only part of the Robin story I recall better than a movie or BBC episode is that he feebly loosed an arrow from the Kirklees Priory and where the arrow landed was where he is buried. Great tale. Of the many great Robin Hood tales over the last millenium that one, I’ve just learned, is from the 18th Century. I read that as a child at my grandparent’s one summer. Why? It was there.

I may have a reading problem, and it started early.

Barbecue for dinner tonight, risking crowds from a dual graduation/move in weekend. Do not visit a grocery store, Walmart or Home Depot on weekends like this. You take your life into your own hands.

So we stand in line at Moe’s, order our barbecue and then stand around for a table. This is a bit difficult. As reasonable as the food is, they’ve taken great pains to push you out of the door — awkward decor, lighting that is off just so, poorly placed televisions, uncomfortable chairs — but people just sit around. And sit around. And sit ar —

“Ticket number THIRTY-FIIIIIVE!”

We’d only just found a table, having identified a group that put two together, sat with friends and then left. The table for eight stayed joined when only three were there. And so we made our own, grabbed the food, ate and hustled out of there before the loud, live music started.

Some days you feel older than others, I guess.

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17
Jul 11

Sport, sport, sport, steak, ice cream

We are watching the 1989 Iron Bowl, it is like giving an education, really. The Yankee, you see, was up north and not yet interested in football. When she moved to the South she said her allegiance was for sale. Whatever big time football game someone took her to first would be the team she’d cheer for.

I took her to an Auburn game, and she was hooked.

Here’s Carl Stephens with some of the best words in the world. I recorded that at the game that night. We sat in the upper deck, on the west side over the 20 yard line. As we’d only been dating a few short months by that time I was trying to play it cool and not sound too overwhelming, but there’s so many things you have to know about this place. How Auburn played that night wasn’t one of them, as the Tigers came out flat in their season opener. But that was 2005.

This is about 1989. For some lovely reason the local television stations have taken to filling weekend programming with old Auburn football games this summer. This is brilliant television, really, and there’s no better choice than the first Iron Bowl in Auburn. Pat Dye called it the most emotional moment in school history. David Housel, who’s never been shy about bad historical hyperbole, likened it to reaching the promised land. The players that played there that day said the place has never been louder or more crazed or desperately intense.

Take it away, Jim Nantz:

Is it football season yet?

So we’ve watched the first three quarters, and it is great to see Reggie Slack — who’s selling insurance these days after a cup of coffee in the NFL and a Grey Cup appearance in the CFL. The third play of the game:

It is nice to see Keith McCants again, who was just an incredibly talented, scary good football player.

He’s had some legal problems, but by all accounts is the guy you root for. And he’s lobbying, on his Facebook page, to be on the next season of Dances With the Stars. Seems that his career is now mostly Retired Star Football player, but becoming a star in the South may let you do that. The best part is just hearing the crowd and the marching bands, before the stadium was filled with piped in music. You can forget the original atmosphere if you aren’t careful.

Haven’t shown her this yet:

Seriously. Can it be football season now?

Rode 38.5 miles on the bike today. Felt very nice and the sun only came out late in the journey. Saw this:

It is like they are saying “A payphone! Use me!” This now costs $.50. I couldn’t tell you the last time I used a pay phone, so this $.15 increase was a novel surprise. Perhaps the calls should get cheaper as demand has gone down …

I would say pay phones, perhaps like pawn shops and check cashing stores, should be a status indicator, but that phone was at a nice gas station in a fine part of town. We got Gatorade there and pedaled on.

Great soccer game today. The U.S. women’s side was quite good, but not great. The Japanese played solid, but not spectacular. The Americans couldn’t close the deal and the Japanese ladies would not quit, coming from behind twice to force penalty kicks. And from there the sense of inevitability gave way to a little disbelief. But the Japanese were great and deserving winners.

More to the point, that was 120 minutes of great, clean sport, played well by two teams. It was wonderful see a contest about the game, not about some scandal or overwrought subtext — the healing of Japan thing got overplayed, but that was unavoidable. This was 11 a side playing hard and, for the most part, playing very well. Great experience, even if the other team won.

Now if only the spectators and media would be more interested prior to the Big Game, but perhaps one of these days. What was intriguing was how the narrative for the Americans was not about gender or equality, but about sport and competition. There’s a subtle shift that started taking place in the televised coverage that is worth noting.

Steaks on the grill tonight. We low-grilled the meat, baked potatoes and fried some okra. After dinner we commemoration National Ice Cream Day by buying a pint on a cone at Bruster’s. They close at 10. They aren’t really amused when you show up at 9:45, but we got the obligatory ice cream celebration in just under the gun.

It is a tough life, I tell you.

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16
Jul 11

Soggy, crab cakes and “big hair, dread-a-locks”

“Hurry, so we can ride before the rain.”

Didn’t quite work out that way. On the other hand, the silver lining of those drunken, soggy, incontinent clouds, is that I think I discovered the secret. Somehow it seemed easier to go up hills with three pounds of water in my shoes.

I think the weight helped push the pedals.

So we rode 17.19 miles. The temperature when we got home was a brilliant 73 — we saw a guy in a hoodie, in Alabama in July — so that was grand. For a time it was hard to see. The rain was actually refreshing and cool. It was patently dumb, so I called an end to the ride. The Yankee said “It will stop by the time we get home.” It did. She is very smart.

But by then we were home. And we resolved that this better be a pause, and the heavens better populate our fine community with feral cats and dogs learning about gravity, or else we would kick ourselves for packing it in.

It rained more.

We made shrimp and crab cakes from Whitey’s in Florida, and corn and tomato salad from Ajax Diner in Mississippi as this week’s experiment from the Off the Eaten Path book. Both tasty, but I think there’s only so many ways a corn and tomato side can turn out. Now, the shrimp and crab cakes were almost divine. Not bad for two people who’ve never made them before.

How long did it say to fry them? I asked this after taking over, because the oil was popping and burning my now very upset, in pain co-chef. On one of the last crab cakes a bit of oil jumped out of the skillet and headed directly to my face. My flinching to the left — and truly, it was only a flinch — meant the dollop of hot burning sulfurous dripping sauce landed on the bridge of my nose, rather than in my left eye. Next time I’m breaking out the shop goggles.

Shop goggles, I say. I probably have some from my high school in a box somewhere. Everyone hated the shop goggles, but we were teenagers:we hated everything that had to do with safety and responsibility and sanity. It is amazing all of those people graduated with ten fingers.

I believe our teachers — fine, fine gentlemen — would have built a XX Days Without An Accident sign if only their students wouldn’t have interpreted it as a challenge. I’d tell you stories, but OSHA’s statute of limitations has not yet expired, and I graduated from high school 16 years ago.

Anyway, I am now the only person in North America to have eaten crab cakes with a dollop of aloe vera on just the bridge of his nose. If we’d made them earlier in the day I could have been the only person in North America to have eaten crab cakes with a dollop of aloe vera on just the bridge of his nose and wet socks, a feat that may never be duplicated.

We’re aiming high around here; it is the weekend.

Oh, need a tune stuck in your head?

Don’t even pretend to be upset. You’re sharing that with everyone in your office come Monday.

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12
Jul 11

The heat’s fault

I learned how to swing a golf club in weather not too different from this, about three miles from here in fact, about 13 years ago. That field is now being developed for … something not involved with poor uses of a 5-iron.

That seemed more polite than saying “Someone mentioned on Twitter that their heat index was 109 today. I live in a place that makes 109 seem pleasant. The heat index here was 119 here today.”

Because that’s just obnoxious, especially since I’m not making that up.

So I was a little sad I had not yet retrieved my bike, because I would have absolutely ridden at 119, at least for a few miles, just to say I had done it. That’s the sort of thing that makes my grandparents scoff and question my decision-making.

My bike was ready. It was ready on Saturday, but they would not let me pick it up until today. I waited and waited for them to call, but they did not. So I finally went over for a visit. Paid for the two tuneups and bought new CO2 cartridges.

We had a discussion on the value of the decimal point. This particular one was worth 62 dollars, and I’m glad we talked about it as it worked out in my favor. Loaded my car up, bursting into a terrific sweat just wrestling the thing in the car. Got home, unloaded the bike, and my sweat glands proved their efficiency by again jumping into service as I put the front wheel back on. This is a quick release wheel. It takes just a few seconds to slide it into the fork, seat the hub, put the brakes over the rim, tighten the brakes and the release. It was … warm out.

Picked up The Yankee at the Atlanta Airport, home of useful signs and traffic jams.

You know that place on the curb where you drop off people and pick them up, even though the airport, police and all of us agree no one else (except you, of course) should be allowed to do so? Atlanta, in addition to the shuttles, park-n-rides, MARTA, on-site lots, cabs and so on, has a two-tiered curb system. If you were exiting the airport, you’d walk out from baggage, through a door into a sultry Georgia evening and see three lanes of cars. Then you’d see a covered pedestrian refuge island. And then you’d see three more lanes of cars. Beyond that is one of the many parking decks. It is the six lanes that draw your attention, for they are a mess.

But pedestrian pickup dynamics are interesting. My first pass through the airport the inside lanes were an unmitigated disaster. So I chose the outer route. I happened to be right on time, which really meant six minutes early, so I had to do the loop again. I texted “Go to the outside lanes.”

By the time I came around for my second pass the inside lanes were sparsely populated. The outer three lanes were wrecked. Partly because of the several Atlanta PD cruisers in violation of some still-unread section of the Patriot Act prohibiting parking within a four mile radius of airports, Republicans or George Bush. The other reason the outer lanes were wrecked was because of civilian cars parked and abandoned in the pickup area in direct violation of the Patriot Act, the 28th Amendment and common human decency.

So on my third pass I chose the inside three lanes, because the cruisers and the parked cars had not moved in the 75 seconds it took for my return pass. These were moving smoothly on my second circle, but they were gridlock this time through. All three lanes were stalled, mostly because of the double-parking, diagonal attempts at preventing door dings from someone from Gwinnett County. Atlantans know this to be true.

I finally picked up my best girl from her weekend home — there was a god-niece’s baptismal to attend — and we head for home. But not before stopping at Sprayberry’s, where I visited last week. She didn’t get to go, since I’d already dropped her off at the airport by then. Tonight we closed the place, reveling in the best 9 p.m.-is-late-night atmosphere that small town Georgia has to offer. She pronounced the barbecue very good, which it is. I had the Lewis Grizzard special — barbecue, stew and perhaps the best onion rings ever — I felt a just a little more Southern. It is possible.

There’s something on the menu there, the Houston Special, which is the stew on a barbecue sandwich. This is named after Houston Sprayberry, the founder of the place (established in 1926). I did not order it, but dipped some of my stew over the pork. If anyone ever asks me what a grandpa plate tastes, this is the answer. I can imagine every old man in the region eating this. Probably they are torturing the language as they do so, while enjoying their sandwich and looking forward to a Neehi or a Moon Pie or some other regional thing. They are imparting a lifetime of wisdom and defiance on an impressionable young person who is not interested in stew on a sandwich who is thinking Stew is a stew. It should not be on a sandwich. Ironically, dropping the extra pork into the stew tasted entirely different.

Links: This is a piece of poignancy making the rounds, father and son at the first shuttle launch, and again at the last. But if you really want to get misty eyed over pictures, Dear Photograph. Give it a try. You’ll catch the premise immediately, there’s a universal call to appeal there, and you’ll realize looking through the full site is worth the time.

Birds. On radar.

And, now, the most obvious story you’ll read this week, the one that makes you question the scruples and decency of a union which would make such ridiculous claims. (Hint: this is about teachers.) Dr. Joe Morton, the state school superintendent, is retiring. He seems a good man. I’ve interviewed him several times. The AEA recently published a hit piece on the guy. And now, on the way out the door, he’s having to defend himself. But for what?

In a recent issue of the Alabama Education Association’s Alabama School Journal, AEA Associate Executive Secretary Joe Reed said Morton has been “openly hostile” to public educators and that Morton proposed that more teachers have their certificates revoked than past superintendents.

Morton told the state school board Tuesday that Reed’s assertions are “incorrect and wrong minded.”

Morton said he takes the revocation of certificates very seriously and that most revocations he recommended involved teachers using illegal drugs, having inappropriate sexual contact with students or committing crimes.

Just a little more evidence: the union is not in it for the kids.

If you were wondering, my golf swing has never improved that much. I blame the crushing heat.

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9
Jul 11

Sizzle and ouch

Lord, it was hot today. Walked out onto the back porch and was slightly baked by the convection currents. The thermometer suggested the heat index was 110 degrees.

I have a reasonable tolerance of heat, but be it psychological or physical, anything over 106 just hurts.*

So I hid inside and read. I watched a little television. I caught up on the site. Everything is up-to-date. The July photo gallery is current. Until very recently the photo gallery section was criminally behind. No more.

Also, I transferred a lot of video from blip.tv to boxes holding iframes here. Blip is great. I still use them, but I like to have them linked on the home site, too. So that got done.

Late in the afternoon, when it was only 92 or so, I took The Yankee’s bike to the bike store for a tuneup.

“You’re the guy that brought in the Felt, right?”

That’s right. Good memory.

“I fixed it. It will be ready on Tuesday.”

These are nice guys, they give good advice and have actually offered us a few freebies, but I hope they never run the world. Dropped my bike off late Friday. It was ready by late Saturday. I can pick it up on Tuesday?

I caught up on Falling Skies, TNT’s newest superlatively promoted summer program. Aliens invaded and they’re stilling kids. Somehow John Carter, who left ER to become a librarian and then a professor of history, must save them.

The acting is a bit wooden, but it is post-apocalyptic with optimism, and so that deserves a look. My rule of thumb for science fiction is three episodes. Intrigue me by then or lose me forever. I’m giving Falling Skies a fourth episode, but only because of Will Patton. Tomorrow night’s episode better give me something more. (I’m sure they’re all rushing in to re-write and re-shoot as they read this.)

I even cleaned off a bit of the Netflix queue. Watched it already? Delete. Indy film? You get a short leash. I nixed one this evening because, for the first three minutes there was no dialog. There was a lovely window shot, an introduction to two characters who just stared at each other and then a dream sequence. Three minutes worth of this. Gone.

I did watch One Week, which offers a grim scenario — you get a cancer diagnosis, decide you don’t like much about your life and then buy a motorcycle.

Even if you don’t care for the movie, the scenery is worth seeing alone. Beautifully shot film.

*When we got married the heat index was around 122 degrees. We were married outdoors. We are very smart.