Month: September 2015

Good morning, y’all. I called my attorney, Adam Dimwit, again this morning to check the status of my appeal for greater “roaming” rights and got stonewalled by his secretary. I guess he wants money and it looks like I’ll be forced to sell off some of my famous guitar picks to get some scratch. Anybody interested in an autographed Ace Frehley, circa 1977? Now’s the time to buy.

Part of my desire for gaining more roaming rights is to be able to handle all of TackyToo’s custodial duties myself. Since my release, I’ve been having to pay a handy man to fix anything further than a hundred feet from Number Two. I’ve also got a “Lawn Care Specialist” who’s charging me about $60 dollars an hour. I don’t care if he does provide his own equipment and gas, we’re getting up near Dentist rates with my grass man. He doesn’t even do anything. He’s got two Hispanic fellows that literally run behind their mowers while my “Specialist” sits in his F350 truck with the A.C. blowing. I live for the day when I get to fire that scurvy dog.

Anyhow, I did have a call I could fill this morning. We have a new tenant in Number One, Ms. Filet Minyon, who has moved in to the trailer formerly occupied by B.A. Ware. As you all remember, Mr. Ware was our “alleged” peeper, and his antics forced TackyToo to install our first ever security system. Well, it took a couple of weeks, but we got him. Just like a gambler’s gotta gamble, a peeper’s gotta peep. About two weeks after putting up the cameras, I got a perfect picture of B.A. “amusing” himself outside of Number Fifty Three, Anita Goodman’s trailer. With police response time being what it is, and me on a short tether, I waited until the next day to call a tenants meeting. With all of his neighbors gathered round, B.A. was confronted with the evidence on the big screen in the rec room. No amount of denials could outweigh the evidence of B.A.’s “Mustache Rides 5 Cents” t-shirt, that he proudly wore on the surveillance tape. I gave him a week to clean his things out, and boom, we were done with him. It took another week and three jugs of Clorox to get the trailer ready for proper folk again. Ms. Minyon moved in on the first of September.

The nature of the call was a broken toilet seat. No problem for an old hand such as myself. Probably the only advantage I can think of growing up poor is that you learn how to do things for yourself. Plumbing, electrical, you name it, I’ll throw my hat in. I grabbed my long screw driver and pliers and sent Mulva off to Walmart to buy a replacement seat. It took Mulva two trips, there is a difference between round and elongated, even if the measurements are the same. Anyway, while Mulva was making her return trip, I had the occasion to visit with Ms. Minyon. She was right chatty, and when I got round to asking how the toilet seat got broken, I was stunned with her forthrightness. Seems she was concerned how her butt looked in this dress, I call it the Kardashian effect, and had stood up on the toilet seat to look back over her shoulder at the mirror above the sink. Next thing she knows, craaccckkk, and the toilet seat is split in two. It was “just impossible to go” with the seat broken in half like that. Well, finally, Mulva showed up with the right seat, and ten minutes later, we were out of there. I suggested to Ms. Minyon she get a full length mirror for the back of the bathroom door and that I’d be happy to install it for her.

When I told Mulva the story, she laughed and said, “yeah, I can see how that could happen”.  I gave Mulva a curious look. I will never understand the female mind. I headed over to the rec room to watch the Alien talk football on the SEC Network. Just another day at TackyToo.

Good morning, y’all. I called my attorney, Adam Dimwit, this morning between courses of my “Grand Slam” breakfast from Denny’s. Sometimes, Mulva will just up and do something like go get me take out and bring it back here to TackyToo so I don’t feel quite so isolated. She is truly a good woman. Dimwit relates that things are going slowly, but he is confident. He had the poor taste to bring up my bill and I attempted to shame him by recounting the depths of my despair. We both missed our desired objectives.

Speaking of missed objectives, I see that Mike Huckabee is trying to make religious fodder out of the misguided Kentucky clerk’s dilemma. It seems to me the situation has enough of a carnival atmosphere without dragging the “seldom right but never in doubt” Huckabee’s interpretation of the Constitution into the fray. In a televised rally, staged to coincide with the clerk’s release from jail, Huckabee delivered an altar call to the faithful gathered about. The call to the faithful is to ignore the laws of the United States and basically do whatever they interpret the Bible to say. Huckabee casually ignores history to relate how the Founding Fathers wanted to ensure that people of faith would not have to be oppressed by a government that wanted to enforce contrary views on the populace. Huckabee is calling on the faithful to live their conscience, not their citizenship.

Finally, a religion I can get behind. Let’s start with taxes, I don’t want to pay them. I don’t see the need for licensing or registering births, marriages or deaths. All of that information could be used by an oppressive government to seek out followers for prosecution. While we’re at it, let’s do away with everything in Washington, D.C. Why should federal standards be applied to anything? If I don’t want my children to think they’re smarter than me, we can just stop educating them. If I don’t want to vaccinate my kids from polio, why should I? There’s a good chance they won’t get it. If I’m ok with a coal burning power plant providing good jobs for the people in my area, why should North Carolina care if the smoke blows their way? What’s more, why I should I have to give up any of the Chattahoochee’s water to Alabama and Florida? Let them get their own water. If I want a peace treaty with Iran then Governor Nathan Deal can make it for me. There’s no reason to consider what the other forty nine states think, I believe in government close to home.

Just like that idjit clerk in Kentucky, if I don’t believe in a law, I’m not going to do it. I just don’t want to go to jail for my civil disobedience. I just want to wrap myself up in my religious cloak of invisibility and move through society unnoticed. Like the churches do at tax time.

All kidding aside, I think Brother Huckabee has a problem comprehending a document with more than ten rules to live by. The U.S. Constitution currently has twenty seven amendments, or rules, all voted and ratified by each state. Has anyone ever taken their religion to all fifty states and asked for a straight up and down vote to see what the majority of the residents feel? I don’t think so.

To simplify things, I’d like to direct Brother Huckabee to the words of his main guy, Jesus. Jesus laid down the relationship between citizens and their government in Matthew 22:15-22. The phrase “render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s” pretty much covers the subject for me. Apparently, 2000 years ago Jesus recognized there would be conflicts between what the converted wanted to do and what their responsibility as citizens required. For you true believers out there, if your conscience won’t allow you to keep the law, do what I do, go to jail. But like that great American, Tony Baretta, used to say, “don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time”.

Take us home Johnny:

Good morning, y’all. It’s hard in some respects to be oriented to the world in general based off of my current situation. I guess one would say my small world got smaller, so I was kind of shocked to find out I was the only one at TackyToo who didn’t know today was Labor Day. For the rest of you, Happy Day Off!

I guess I’m presuming that you got the day off. I know a lot of businesses have felt a moral imperative to not create an inconvenience for their customers by closing on Labor Day. To those of you who are working this day for one of these socially aware businesses, let me say, I hope you find something better between now and next Labor Day. Folks need more days off, and in my mind a day off is a small thing to say “thank you” to the ones that “brung you”. The world may all be robots some day, it seems like we’re working in that direction, but until then, the bosses should be happy to say a thank you with a day off for the people in the trenches.

Speaking of the trenches puts me in mind of the times my parents used to talk about so much, The Great Depression. For those of you who learned history from books approved by the Texas Board of Education, “Great” does not mean fun, fabulous, an opportune time to make money. “Great” in this contexts mean all encompassing. During the Great Depression, unemployment rose to 25% and there was no social safety net underneath to catch people before they fell into total ruin. Farm prices fell by as much as 60% and construction was non-existent. If you had a farm you could at least feed your family, and perhaps barter for the other things you needed. Unfortunately, there are things in life like taxes that require cash, and that was a real problem. Men would travel far and wide to look for cash jobs while leaving their families back on the farm to keep things together there. Such was the case for my Grandpa Lite who followed my great granddaddy Waller into the mines in Copperhill, Tn.

Everybody in the area has heard the old joke about the traveling salesman that was traveling by bus from Asheville to Chattanooga and woke up as they were coming into Copperhill. The story goes he fell into a fit of crying and wailing when he looked out the window because he thought he died and ended up in Hell.

If you’ve never been to Copperhill, Tennessee, let me recommend you make the trip. It is a perfect example of how industry will completely strip an environment in the pursuit of riches. The landscape still reveals the damage, although covered now by kudzu, that was done by the mine pumping out sulphur and other toxic chemicals into the environment. The damage done to the miners was much better hidden. I was unable to locate a “cancer map” for the area. I guess since the mine shut down in the 1980’s, the data may have not been collected, or lost.

I do have a personal bit of data that I can share, though. My great granddaddy John Waller died in the mine at Copperhill. As the story goes, a support timber cracked and he stayed behind to physically hold the timber while others escaped. Granny Waller moved in with Grandpa and Grandma Lite and added her farm to theirs. I was staying on the farm with them when I first heard the song “Big John”, by Jimmy Dean. Lest you think I misremember my facts, the story of Grandaddy Waller was known to me long before the song came out. It was just kind of an audial deja vu to hear it being sung.

Let me finish up by saying to workers everywhere, enjoy your day. A day off is not enough, but with diligence and focus maybe someday we’ll have it as good as workers in other countries, like, I dunno, France.

Good morning, y’all. Sometimes, it feels like the world just conspires to bring you down, sometimes, it’s just your wife. I’ve been riding a high since my Bulldogs took a bite out of the infidels of ULM. Mulva has come home from church and dumped a load of misery right on my doorstep.

Now, I mentioned earlier that one of the positives of being on house arrest was missing the multiple services of The Full Gospel Original Church of God. Mulva brings me the highlights, and they have sparked some “spirited” discussions. Today’s free-for-all didn’t revolve around ideology as much as personality. Personality is always so much harder. Ideology is in the vapor, personalities you can reach out and touch. I guess that means I have trouble with reality.

Anyway, the Right Reverend Dale E. Bread has been unable to handle the entertainment portion of the show since the incident, which is placing a huge burden on the coffers of the church. It’s one thing to bring in a traveling minister to hold a revival, because you’re hoping to increase the size of the congregation. On the other hand, having the faithful pay for two preachers, and one of them at specialist rates, is more than most congregations can handle. The Baptists and Methodists maybe, but not our little spirit filled church. So, for the third straight Sunday, the Reverend Bread has sat on the sidelines while another minister handled the altar call and performed the testament of faith.

The congregation showed their tolerance and reached out to a woman pastor this time, the Reverend Helena Handbasket. I asked Mulva if it was tolerance or parsimonious that determined the choosing of a woman. The Reverend Handbasket was about thirty percent cheaper than her male counterpart. Mulva bit her tongue and proceeded to tell me what a good job the Reverend Handbasket had done. Her long red flowing hair seemed to give an otherworldly cast to the performance as the lights struck her from behind. The congregation was truly moved. Hugh Morris came forward and gave his soul to Jesus. Old man Morris hasn’t moved in his pew in the last twenty years, even to scratch. For decades folks have speculated he had gone on to his final reward when they’d see him sitting so still during the service. Ever watchful, the congregation has been denied their view of an ascension for years. On the last note of the benediction, old man Morris always pops up and goes on about his business. This Sunday Hugh popped up early. I hope it was the altar call and not a bladder call.

I expressed my confusion to Mulva as to what the dilemma was, seeing as the Reverend Handbasket had brought a soul to Jesus and that surely word of mouth would bring in the curious next Sunday. In my mind, the church would get an up tick in donations which should certainly cover the discounted preacher’s pay. The problem, as she explained it, was how to avoid paying the Reverend Bread at all. Since he’d been injured in the performance of his duties, Mulva was concerned the church was in a funny space. Well, I conjured on that one for a while and I finally came up with an example that fit, Jimmy Swaggart.

Now, for those of you that don’t remember the story, Jimmy Swaggart was a Pentecostal preacher down in Baton Rouge that went from poor to super rich via his televangelism. As it is with many members of the cloth entertainers, preaching  talking to a camera doesn’t have the same satisfaction as bearing witness to sinners in person entertaining before a live audience. It was during the laying of hands on a wayward female that the Reverend Swaggart was exposed as a frequenter of a New Orleans red light district. Like the Reverend Bread, Jimmy Swaggart fell victim to a crisis of faith and ultimately was defrocked. Swaggart’s tearful apology to the world on his TV show was one of the great moments of religious programming, somewhere near the 900 foot Jesus.

I summarized to Mulva that if Reverend Bread was a cowboy and couldn’t get back on the horse, he wouldn’t be a cowboy anymore. She liked the “getting back on the horse” analogy, but wasn’t all that comfortable with advising the Reverend Bread to find a new line of work. I’m sure this is not the last word, but here was Jimmy Swaggart’s:

Good morning, y’all. I have to admit this is the first game I’ve watched completely sober in forever. I find the same things that irritated the beejesus out of me while I was imbibing, bother me when I’m sober.

Daddy used to say, “don’t complain about the farmer with your mouthful”, which was his way of saying don’t complain about a situation that is in your favor. I guess I’m just a whiner. Georgia turned back the infidels from the University of Louisiana AT Monroe by a score of 51-14, but I see room for improvement.

After our first possession, a 3 and out, we unleashed the Kraken, who wears number 27 by the way. Nick Chubb drew first blood with a nifty 14 yard run through a hole so big I believe I could have walked through it. Chubb scored twice and totaled 120 yards on the day, his ninth straight 100 yard game. We were treated to the return of Keith Marshall who scored  twice with 73 yards rushing. The big surprise to me though, was Sony Michel. Coming out of the backfield as a receiver, he is frightening, a 31 yard touchdown play to go with his 44 yards rushing. Offensively, we are truly blessed. The indecision at quarterback seems to be in our rear-view mirror. Barring injuries, or stupid boneheaded decisions made by young men away from home for the first time, we look like we can run with the big dogs.

Special teams were exceptional, in the good way. Someone figured out that kickoffs that go deep into the end zone can’t hurt you like squibs can. We made all of our extra points, and generally looked much improved from last year. Our kickoff and punt returns are going to create points this year, I guarantee it!

Defensively, while light years ahead of the Grantham years, we still need a lot of work. I am a true believer in the one true defensive God, Erk Russell. Erk’s quote, “If we score, we may win. If they never score, we’ll never lose.”, should be tattooed on the back of the hands of the defensive players so they can refer to it as often as necessary. For most of Coach Richt’s tenure, Georgia’s defense has looked like the defensive efforts of NBA All-Star games, last team that scores, wins. After the loss of defensive coordinator Brian Van Gorder to the NFL, the Georgia defense has resembled the cast of “Dazed and Confused”, in their level of play.

“Dazed and Confused” reached its zenith a couple of years ago under defensive coach Todd Grantham. It was a common pre-snap occurrence to have nine players wandering around waving their arms for direction from the sidelines. We seemed to have reversed the situation today with only two players wandering around looking for their assignment. I feel zero lost players is the only acceptable number. Sometimes it’s the simple scheme executed perfectly that has the best chance for success. I’m looking forward to a big improvement next week against Vanderbilt.

In defense of the defense, we did have a pick, a blocked punt for a safety and until we completely lost our focus near the end of the half, had held the intruders in check. It’s the loss of focus that kills us. It would never happen if Erk was still around. Erk demanded focus among other things.

Well, Auburn certainly looks beatable, as does Tennessee and Florida. Alabama and South Carolina will require focus, I hope we can find it.

Good morning, y’all. Well, I can hardly contain my excitement, the big day is finally here. It’s just hours until our fearless lads take the field of combat against the infidels of the University of Louisiana AT Monroe. GO DAWGS!!!!

Speaking of good dogs, it’s time to introduce a very important member of the Lite family, our dog Butts. If you believe urban legends, and the stories my Daddy told, then Butts is directly related to the family of dogs that are bred to be the mascot of the University of Georgia, UGA. For those of you that have been living in a cave, or Alabama, let me tell you about the lineage of the fine beasts bred to be the standard for the University of Georgia. The candidates for mascot are purebred English bulldogs bred by the Seiler family down in Savannah, Georgia. The candidates are culled for the appropriate qualities of a mascot and only the finest examples of bulldogs are allowed to take the field to represent the University. Now, as you can imagine, the “seconds” still command a very high price, I hear as much as $5,000 per dog.

Obviously, an animal of this quality is as out of my reach as the Kentucky Derby winner, which begs the question, how did I come by a potential cousin of UGA himself?

The story goes that Daddy was down in Savannah servicing his “Gentlemen’s” vending machines when he happened into a card game, as was his habit. Lightning strikes every now and again and this time it struck Daddy, he was cleaning up every hand. Well, they get down to the last game and this old boy is out of cash, but he does have something of value. A genuine Seiler bulldog pup. Well, Daddy’s aces and eights prove to be the dead man’s hand for the other fellow and Daddy had himself a celebrity. Daddy named the pup Halsey after a famous admiral. Daddy treated Halsey to a life that was the envy of all of us. Daddy truly loved that dog, and it was a weird emotional thing to watch Daddy lavish such care and devotion on an animal. A famous animal mind you, but not a person, much less kinfolk. Anyway, they were a pair. When Daddy would get in his cups he’d called Halsey, Ballsy. If you’ve ever walked behind a bulldog you’d know why. Daddy took to breeding Halsey with suitable companions and we’d split the litters with the females owners. Halsey is long gone, like Daddy, but his progeny live on. My dog Butts is a great-great-grandson of Halsey.

Now people ask, “why’d you name your dog Butts?”, and I say it’s after one of Georgia’s most famous coaches. I endure the look of curiosity for a while, then I reply, “Wally Butts”, which helps some of them. Truth is, you can’t go to a tailgate, or a dog park, or anywhere in Georgia where there may be a congregation of canines and holler, “Dooley” and not be overrun by dogs. “Sanford”, after the stadium, is also becoming a popular name. You’ll never hear anyone hollering “Butts”. I don’t get it, where’s the love?

Wally Butts was Georgia’s most successful coach if you go by national championships, which I think we do. Butts has two, Dooley one and current coach Richt has 0. Coach Butts won the SEC title five times, current coach Mark Richt was won twice. Catch my drift? That’s why you don’t hear any dogs named “Richt”.

Coach Butts’ good name was tarnished back in 1962 in the Saturday Evening Post in an article that was contributed to by Atlanta sportswriter Furman Bisher. The article blasted Coach Butts for allegedly conspiring with Bear Bryant to fix a game. I remember thinking at the time that if Coach Butts had handed Coach Bryant the Georgia playbook it would not have changed the outcome of the game. We were that bad and they were that good. A libel suit was filed and the damaged parties were compensated, but still, a sad footnote to an illustrious career. I guess that’s why you don’t hear more dogs being named Butts.

Well, I got to get a few hours of sleep before starting my game day ritual. Enjoy a unique perspective on the game we love:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xus57BaY3hI

Good morning, y’all. I’m happy to report that the parole board weighed my impending death due to toothache, determined that it might qualify as cruel and unusual punishment, and relented in allowing me the freedom to visit my dentist, Dr. Moore Paine, at his office in Blairsville. 

Now, Moore’s a good old boy, but his office location bespeaks to his success, or lack there of. Moore’s office is in a strip mall, which is literally between two adult entertainment joints. In fact, my daughter Melody danced for a long time at one of the places. I imagine it’s hard to make ends meet in the adult entertainment biz in a dry county, but the strip joints seem to be doing better than Moore. I reckon most males in these parts would rather see naked women than get their teeth cleaned, go figure. There is room for speculation that Moore’s name may come in to play in his success, or lack there of. Moore is a family name, on his Momma’s side, and in the South we like to pass the burden on down to the next generation if we can. In Mima and Papaw Paine’s defense, who knew Moore was going to be a dentist?

Anyhow, I’m sitting in Moore’s office watching TV, waiting my turn, when I start watching this story out of Atlanta about a policeman that’s been shot while on a call to a house. It is reported that the homeowner has been shot as well. First reports are that the police entered the house based on a 911 call and that the homeowner opened fire resulting in getting himself shot and a policeman shot. From the tone of the story, it seems that we’re now getting the backlash from the “black lives matter” movement and that the networks are really playing up the violence done to cops, while subordinating the violence the cops do to the public. I get it, if you need help, who are you going to call? We need police, but most importantly we need good police.

As this story unfolds, the policeman was shot by friendly fire, the unarmed homeowner was shot while running to hide and the police killed the man’s dog who was trying to protect his owner from intruders. A major cluster. The police didn’t have a warrant, didn’t have probable cause, exigent circumstance or any legal justification for entering the man’s home. They just found an unlocked door and came on in based on a vague 911 call that didn’t even give the address of the house. I try to wrap my mind around a story like this, and I can’t. This crap happens everyday, from the 90 year old Granny shot in her home in Atlanta, to the black fellow shot in the back in North Charleston, and I’m unable to come up with any explanation other than our policemen are scared sh*tless constantly. Nothing else fits.

As a person who has what might be called, an “insider’s” viewpoint of law enforcement, I can tell you for a fact that guns are always part of the problem, not the solution. I can Google statistics for you of countries all over the world that do a better job of not killing each other, either citizen to police, police to citizen, citizen to citizen, or police to police, but if you’re interested you can do that for yourself. Let me just point out that as one of the most armed countries in the world, Americans do a crap job of protecting one another.

My uncle Ebb was a WWII M.P. that continued his career in law enforcement after returning home. He carried a gun, but never used it. He did carry a billy, and later on a baton, which were used as necessary. Having been on the wrong end of a baton I can tell you that they are great “attention getters”. If the suspect is unarmed, there is no greater force needed than a baton in the hands of a well trained officer. The qualifier is unarmed suspect, and I get it, the police are dealing with far too many armed suspects. Maybe the solution to relieving the police’s anxiety is to “outlaw all of the guns, so that only outlaws will have guns”, as the bumper sticker says. Sort of simplifies things for the police doesn’t it? If the suspect has a gun, they’re a criminal. Boom!

I know the argument is more complicated than my simple solution, but I’d like to take the police’s anxiety level down about two hundred notches. Based off of the Atlanta story it’ll keep the police from accidently killing each other. There was a reason Sheriff Taylor only gave Barney Fife one bullet, and Barney had to keep that bullet in his shirt pocket. Think about that while enjoying an oldie.

Good morning, y’all. First, the good news, it’s three days to kickoff and the Dawgs have finally named a starting quarterback. I tell you what, the suspense in waiting to see who is going to start under center this year has been palpable.

Speaking of palpable brings me to the bad news. I woke up this morning swole up like the Right Reverend Dale E. Bread after Old Ben lit into him. I’ve got a bad tooth, or teeth, that didn’t take kindly to my date night Milk Duds. I’m guessing I’ve pulled out a filling or two and unsettling the core has resulted in a seismic eruption. While I’m waiting to see if the state of Georgia will allow me to travel to Blairsville to see my dentist, I’ve had the time to revisit one of my favorite books, “Letters From The Earth” by Mark Twain.

Now, for those of you not quite as familiar with Mr. Twain, he was very popular in his day and was quite wealthy as a result. He was kind of the Jeff Foxworthy of the 1800’s. Unfortunately, as it is today, new wealth wants to hang out with old wealth and the next thing you know, old wealth is still old wealth, but new wealth is no wealth. Mark Twain was broke towards the end of his life and his writing became a bit more sarcastic. The happy stories of Huckleberry Finn gave way to a much more cynical point of view. If you can find a copy of the book, I highly recommend it.

The setup for the book is that Lucifer has been banished to Earth, and the “Letters From The Earth” are his reports on what a foul up God made. I’m particularly partial, no pun intended, to the passage on teeth. I will paraphrase poorly, but it goes something like; “humans are not born with teeth, and at a time when they are too young to understand the pain, are subjected to their gums erupting with these little bits of bone slicing through. One would think this should suffice, but a few years later these “baby teeth” as they call them, are pushed out of the way by another set of teeth called the “permanent teeth”, who are anything but. For the life of the human, the “permanent teeth” are subjected to various pains and abscesses resulting in extractions until the human is finally fitted with what they call “false teeth”. As if they had ever been anything else!” In my opinion, it should be some kind of law that the actual quote be displayed in every dentist’s office throughout the land, you know, kind of a head’s up.

As previously reported, my brother Jackson and I were as likely to get an audience with the Queen of England as we were to get dentist visits. It is a testimony to our hardy forefathers that the steady diet of candy and soda we consumed in our youth didn’t result in Summer teeth for both of us. You know, sum are here, sum are not. I remember the first time my dentist, Moore Payne, looked in my mouth. He gasped. What he saw was one of his kids going to an Ivy League college, what he had was a brother-in-law who would pay for materials only. Life’s hard, and sometimes family can make it worse.

Sitting here waiting on my call back and I think about Georgia’s most famous dentist, Doc Holliday. Doc Holliday left his practice in Atlanta for the Southwest in hopes of curing his tuberculosis. Doc eventually left the practice of dentistry all together for a more legitimate profession, gambler and gunslinger. I like to think Doc decided it was more humane to put ’em out of their misery with a gun than a drill.

Well, if I don’t get a call back from the parole people soon I’m going to have to call brother-in-law Moore. I’ll tell him to load up his power drill, his reciprocating saw, his hammer and chisel and whatever other tools he thinks he’ll need, and to beat it out here to TackyToo. I’ve got to have some relief before kickoff on Saturday. Go Dawgs!

Good morning, y’all. We’ve had cloudy skies with off and on rain, prayers are being answered! There is even a hint of something not Summer in the air, I’m not committing to Fall this early, it’s just that my flip flops have stopped sticking to the asphalt.

I’d like to start today’s message by giving a really deep personal insight into my psyche, I love horror movies and shows. Horror in any form, from slasher to zombie, from alien invasion to demonic possession, pick your choice, I’m there. My earliest recollection of horror goes to an all day kid’s show at the old Bijou theater in Blairsville, where Mom would park me and Jackson for the day on Saturday. I guess I was about 10, so Jackson would have been about 6, and Mom would dump us out in front of the theater about 9AM and then pick us up at the library around the corner around 5PM. She’d give us a dollar each, which was a lot in those days, and we’d eat crap all day and watch cartoons and the two or three feature movies. On this day there was “The Mummy”, which was not too bad. Jackson was a little unnerved, but I helped him hold his hands over his eyes during the scary parts. “Putting the blinders on” was easy because the movie telegraphed everything; when you know it’s coming it’s not quite as scary is it? Well, the second feature was “The Tingler” starring the scariest guy I’ve ever actually met, Vincent Price. Let me qualify that by saying “movie scary” not real life scary. I’ve met some real scary sons of gun in my time, Vincent would not make the top thousand in real life. But this wasn’t real life and the movie was a corker. What was so cool was that it played on psychology, and apparently I was the target audience. Well, long story short, we bailed out of the theater before Officer Bill from The Popeye Club had given his show and done all of the drawings. The library seemed like a safe refuge from a parasite that attacked its victims based on their fears. Nothing to fear in a library, right?

Not long after this was the breakup and Jackson and I would spend more and more time at TackyToo with Daddy. My seminal moment with horror came one night while I was watching the Bestoink Dooley show and the movie “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” came on. Everything in the movie spoke to me. I didn’t sleep for weeks, or if I did, I’d wake up pulling the imagined vines and webs away from my body as I gasped for breath. I was hooked. Like any obsession, you need more and more to satisfy your cravings and at some point you notice that you can actually analyze your obsession and focus on nuances.

As usual, I have gone around my elbow to get to my kneecap to pay tribute to one of my heroes, Wes Craven, who passed today. Wes Craven was an educated man, a man of letters and a college professor at one time. His work first came to my attention in “The Last House On The Left” which will still get your heart pumping today, I think. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen everything he’s done, including his big production, “Red Eye”, but the Wes Craven franchise is the “Nightmare On Elm Street” series. I think I was about 35 when I saw the first “Nightmare”, and to a kid who spent so much time on their own, it pushed a lot of buttons deep down. Like “Invasion of Body Snatchers” the film sets up an environment where the characters are afraid to go to sleep. Just like real life, the characters can give in to sleep deprivation and “sleep their lives away”, or fight sleep, and risk psychosis. Hard choices. Wes Craven’s Freddy Kruger character, gave a face to evil as opposed to the two earlier horror franchises, Halloween and Friday the 13th. Jason Voorhees and Michael Myers were like the faceless Frankenstein of old, Freddy Kruger looked real, and therefore far more scary. Thanks for that Mr. Craven.

The cinematic world will be a less scary place now that Wes Craven is gone. He will be missed, but his legacy will live forever in the hearts of horror fans and cinephiles.