The headline in the Atlanta paper was little jarring for me. Lewis Grizzard, it said, would have been 70 years old last week.
That’s hard for me to wrap my mind around. It’s hard enough to believe it’s been 22 years since he died, leaving a legion of fans wanting more.
Grizzard (it rhymes with lard, not lizard) was, at one time, the hottest thing on Southern newsprint. His four-times-a-week column appeared first in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and was then syndicated to more than 450 newspapers.
As a columnist, he glorified his Southern roots, in the process making fun of feminists (“hairy-legged Yankee women”), televangelists (“Oral’s speaking to Jesus again, hold on to your wallets”) and Georgia Tech (“I had a cousin who tried to get in, but he didn’t have enough pimples”).
To his legion of fans, Grizzard preached a Southern-fried gospel, standing tall for God and country, this mama, the Georgia Bulldogs and cheeseburgers without mushrooms.
“Do you know what those things really are?” he asked.
Nope.
“Toadstools,” he said. “Frogs go to the bathroom under them things when it’s raining. You better not put them on my cheeseburger.”
I discovered Lewis Grizzard when I was a sophomore in high school. My grandmother had a copy of this first book, “Kathy Sue Loudermilk, I Love You.”
It took me less than a chapter to be hooked. On his thoughts of living in Chicago: “They only have two seasons there. Winter and Fourth of July.” Starting that Christmas and continuing for nearly two decades, my mother gave me Lewis’ latest for Christmas, each as funny as the one before it.
I took his second book, “Won’t You Come Home, Billy Bob Bailey?” to school with me in case I had any free time.
In American History class, Mr. Hall gave us a reading assignment. I don’t remember exactly what the assignment was, but it was probably the chapter on the Spanish-American War and I already knew who won, so I read Grizzard’s book.
I’m sure Mr. Hall wondered what I thought was so funny about the Spanish-American War.
What really rallied his fans was Grizzard’s unabashed love of college football, especially the Georgia Bulldogs. Many columns and whole sections of his albums were about his beloved Dawgs. (“I got nothing against Clemson. It’s sort of Auburn with a lake.”)
He had a famous story about Uga, the bulldog mascot, too. It can be replicated in print. You have to hear it live.
Grizzard suffered the losses, too. In the mid-1980s, after a particularly humiliating loss to Georgia Tech, Grizzard wrote what might have been his most popular – and certainly shortest – column. It said, simply, “Frankly, I don’t want to talk about it,” followed by 20 inches of white space.
A lot of people tell me my columns often reminds them of Grizzard. That’s the nicest compliment I could ever get. He was the master, and I’m so grateful that I got to meet and interview him several times over the years. And I’m grateful for my stack of books and albums that keep his humor alive.
And let’s not forget how he ended many of his speeches, by offering them his so-called secret of inspiration. It came to him in a hotel room in Oklahoma City, and he claimed it was his one original thought in life.
“Life is like a dog-sled team. It you ain’t the lead dog, the scenery never changes.”
