Dogged celebration January 17, 2022

Published by the Times-Georgian–January 15, 2022

http://www.times-georgian.com

by Joe Garrett

How ‘bout them Dawgs!

We hunkered down when it mattered. We didn’t quit. And when Georgia defender Kelee Ringo intercepted 2021 Heisman Trophy winner Bryce Young’s pass for a pick-6, we stepped on the Tide with a hobnail boot and broke their nose.

After 41 years, the Georgia Bulldogs are the National Champions. Oh, let me say it again, the Georgia Bulldogs are the National Champions!

The world has changed a lot since December 31, 1980. That’s the day Margaret Garrett loaded up about a dozen 11 and 12-year-old boys and drove us to an ice-skating rink in Marietta for her son Ben’s birthday party. I wore a Herschel Walker jersey with the number 34 plastered across the front.

We had a great time skating around the ice while Ben blabbered about how lousy a team Georgia is and will get whipped by Notre Dame the next day. It’s hard to tolerate Auburn fans when Georgia’s the superior team, including 16 wins over the last 20 years.

After our time was finished, we had to check out and as I put my equipment on the counter, one ice skate fell towards the ground and landed on my big toe. It turned blue. And it hurt like hell.

The next morning, I was in pain and Georgia was preparing to play for the National title. Thankfully, my mother received a tip from a local pharmacist that the easiest way to remove a toenail was to take a paper clip, put it on a red-hot stove and let it burn a hole in the nail.

It worked.

My toenail popped off, the pain was relieved, Herschel led the Bulldogs to a National title and I didn’t have to listen to Ben’s obnoxious voice for at least another year.

The celebration of Georgia’s 1980 title even made its way into the pulpit at the Carrollton First United Methodist Church. That’s when pastor Dr. Charles Wilson broke the liturgical rules by changing the cross embroidered stole he wore around his robe from white to the color red.

“How ‘bout them Dawgs!” the exuberant preacher shouted when he stepped to the pulpit.

“The Methodist church is pretty strict about the colors we wear to be in harmony with the liturgical calendar,” he told me in a 2012 phone call. “Thankfully, the Bishop thought it was funny and gave me a free pass. I was even able to convince our music director Joyce Alford to change the choir’s colors to red. It was the least I could do.”

The 2021 Georgia team will be etched in history as one of the greatest ever. And Alabama wasn’t too shabby either. I would hate to play them again (and again and again…) as both teams are about as evenly matched as any I’ve ever seen.

Bulldog quarterback Stetson Bennett will be patted on the back by every Georgia fan he encounters for the next 75 years. His fairy tale ending of rising from a walk-on who wasn’t offered a single scholarship by any school in the SEC to win a championship may one day be featured as a Hollywood film in the ranks with underdog sports films like “Rocky” and “Rudy.”

It takes a lot of hard work, excellent recruiting, executing the fundamentals of football blocking and tackling, making few mistakes, great coaching and so much more to win a title. However, I think the real reason Georgia beat Alabama was prayer. Not just any prayer—but the prayer I asked the good Lord above before kickoff written by my old boss and mentor Dan Magill published in his 1993 book “Bull Doggerel: Fifty Years of Anecdotes from the Greatest Bulldog Ever.”

“In case you’ve overlooked it, Lord, we covet what every school covets: the national collegiate football championship! You let us come close to it in 1927, 1942, 1946 and 1971. You may not remember it but we do…

“We know that you move in mysterious ways, Lord, but we don’t understand how you could let so many of our fine boys get so banged up and yet you saved that good for nothing Bulldog, Lewis Grizzard…

“Be with us today, Lord, and when you hear our Red Coat band playing, ‘Onward Christian Bulldogs,’ please shed thy grace on us. And it needn’t be a lob-sided win. Just one point will be fine…

“Oh, Lord, let our Dream come true. Free our people. Let ‘No. 1’ ring throughout our land. From Ludowici westward to Tallapoosa…from the mountains of Hiawassee downhill to Hahira, let No. 1 ring! And, Lord, if you let these good things come to pass, we promise to be as humble as Herschel.”

And here we are, finally, the champions of college football. Thank you, Oh, Lord…

Amen!

Hot skillets and scales January 17, 2022

Published by the Times-Georgian–January 8, 2022

http://www.times-georgian.com

by Joe Garrett

Dear Cornbread,

You’re probably wondering why I’m writing to you, but it’s a new year and with that comes my annual trek to the weighing scale. The good news is I’m five pounds lighter than I was this time last year. As for the other good news, guess how much lighter I was 10 years ago today?

I’ll let you guess, and if you’re close—I’ll let that be our little secret.

Cornbread, you’ve always been there to help me start the new year so I hope you’re not angry that you will not be a part of our annual black-eyed peas/collard greens meal to bring good luck for the next 364 days. You know me too well as do your friends the biscuit, the cinnamon roll, the croissant, the blueberry muffin, the yeast roll, a Krispy Kreme and Wonder Bread.

In other words, don’t worry. Y’all know me too well, and no matter how hard I try—you know I can’t leave you forever (or even a month).

We have traveled together for a long time, and I hope you understand in order for us to continue this journey, we must every now and then take a break. As a member of the local Charles Carroll Cornbread Society, I know my brotherhood will not be happy with me. However, the Food Police Force tells me this is healthy, and I need to work towards finding a balance.

We’ll see if that’s true.

In the meantime, I’m having a hard time knowing it will be a while before I see you again. It’s obviously carrying over into my sleep.

Cornbread, last night I dreamed about you, and you had come alive like Frosty the Snowman and had a voice as powerful as Orson Welles, but for some reason you sounded more like Wayne Garner.

“Why have you decided to leave me?” you asked. “You know if you’re not happy, you can always spread a little more butter or even mix in a few jalapeno peppers.”

“I know,” I answered. “I promise it’s not you. My blue jeans are getting tighter and I don’t want to spend a bunch of money on new clothes right now.”

“But we were so good together,” Cornbread said. “Think of all of the good times we had.”

“Believe me—I have and get teary-eyed,” I replied. “It was as though I could hear Barbra Streisand singing ‘The Way We Were’ in the background as my mind drifted back to the time you were on my plate at Harold’s Barbecue in Atlanta. I took one bite and realized you were stuffed with cracklins made from genuine pig skin. It was life changing.

“Or, that time my wife decided to cook you exactly like the one she read about in New Orleans award-winning chef John Besh’s cookbook where she dabbled a little bacon grease in the black iron skillet before pouring in your batter,” I continued. “It was more than divine.”

“You’re making me start to cry,” Cornbread whispered.

“You’ve always been there,” I told Cornbread as my stomach began to growl. “You always appeared at the right time whether it was my momma’s stove, on the counter at Maw Maw Green’s house and always in my grandfather Leonas’s glass filled with your crumbs and buttermilk.”

“Now you’re making me hungry,” Cornbread said.

“I’ve loved you whether you were cut in a triangle, baked in a muffin pan and even when you were served to me as an old-fashioned stick like they used to do at the Piccadilly,” I said.

And that’s when I woke up from my dream. Cornbread, I guess it’s time for me to leave. My hope is you won’t be mad at me, and maybe view this small departure not as a breakup but more like the time Dolly Parton left Porter Wagoner for a whole new world. On the bright side, they occasionally reconnected and performed together.

So, I’ll leave you with the words Dolly sang to Porter on her way out—

“Bitter-sweet memories,

“That’s all I’m taking with me,

“Good-bye, please don’t cry,

“‘Cause we both know that I’m not what you need,

“But I will always love you.”

Oh, yes Cornbread, I will always love you.

Sincerely,

Your biggest fan

Order up January 1, 2022

Published by the Times-Georgian–December 31, 2021

http://www.times-georgian.com

by Joe Garrett

It’s Christmas Eve, and I’m sitting in a Waffle House.

Apparently, I’m not the only one who likes to eat at the greasy grill on holidays.

Half of the town is here, including my friends Neil and Lynn Weathington.

“I’ve been coming here after attending a church program on Christmas Eve since 1991,” says Neil joyfully. “Lynn has joined me since we first started dating, and we haven’t missed a year. I think it’s safe to say it’s become a tradition.”

While my wife is busy baking her third cake in less than 24 hours for our larger family gathering and my youngest son Henry’s birthday tomorrow, I’m here waiting on our takeout order. I couldn’t have picked a better night to sit at the counter. The short order cook is working wonders amidst the chaos.

“One hash brown scattered, one hash brown scattered and smothered, two eggs over medium, side order of sausage, side order of bacon,” the waitress calls her order over the sounds of the jukebox playing a Dolly Parton Christmas song.

As soon as the server finishes her order, another one shouts to the cook—“Two sides of sausage, one side of country ham, two waffles, one order of toast with no butter and two hash browns scattered.”

I’ve lived long enough to see some amazing things (and I don’t use that word lightly).

Let’s start with the circus. That dude who used to stick his head inside the lion’s mouth was either crazy or needed the money—probably both. Years later my wife and I would go see a Cirque du Soleil show and I’m still speechless from watching the acrobatics, tumbles, twists and turns of each performer.

I’ve even seen some amazing things while growing up in Carrollton. My friend Gil McGinnis once was so double jointed he could wrap both arms behind his neck flip flopped to the other side and choke himself (you’d have to see it to believe it). He’s now a Methodist minister.

And, of course, my friend we called Cabbage in high school could drip saliva from his mouth during lunch, attach it to an English pea and retrieve it quickly back into his mouth like a toad. That was clearly a gift from God.

Here I am again sitting in total awe. The Waffle House short order cook isn’t missing a beat. I don’t think I’ve seen him look at a single scribbled order the servers have attached above the grill, and he’s doing something I didn’t think was humanly possible as a man.

He’s actually listening to women.

Furthermore, he’s actually doing what they’re asking him to do, and isn’t complaining one bit.

Sorry folks, the world is not coming to an end. We are not in the midst of the apocalypse as we enter 2022.

Besides, if you look up the origins of the word apocalypse, it actually derives from the Greek translation “apokalupsis” which really means “unveiling.”

“When things are ‘unveiled,’ we stop taking a whole lot of things for granted,” writes Richard Rohr. “That’s what major events like the COVID-19 pandemic do for us. They reframe reality in a radical way and offer us an invitation to greater depth and breadth—and compassion. If we trust the universal pattern, the wisdom of all times and all places, including the creation and evolution of the cosmos itself, we know that an ending is also the place for a new beginning.”

So here we are again—another new year. The great unveiling is alive and well as we continue to learn more about ourselves, our family, our friends and the world around us. I’ve tried thinking of some resolutions to target in 2022, but all I really need to do is be more like the folks working at the Waffle House—to serve, to listen and be kind.

And every now and then, maybe it’s OK to be more like the folks who are here dining—to splurge on good food.

In case you were wondering, I ordered the Texas Patty Melt platter.

Happy New Year!