Chain letters and snoring dogs

I wonder if God believes in chain letters.

If he doesn’t, then I’m going to be OK because I just broke one.

If he does, then I had better brace myself for 365 days of bad luck.
I mean he’s the only one who is going to know I just killed one out of my “inbox” this morning. (Well, the snoring dog was also somewhat of an eyewitness. I let her out a few minutes ago, but she started scratching on the back door so I let her in. She’s already fast asleep on the old comforter in the corner of my study.)

A neighbor sent us one of those silly chain e-mails. Technology sure has made it easier to perpetuate these kinds of superstitions. In the old days, you had to make copies, put them in an envelope and invest in a stamp. Now, all you have to do is forward it to everyone in your e-mailbox and you will miraculously avoid coming down with the bubonic plague and 212 other curses.

I sure hope God doesn’t believe in chain letters because this one came with a direct threat. If I delete it, I will have one year of bad luck. But, if I send it to at least two friends, I will be rewarded with up to three years of good luck.

Procrastination does not pay, either. The letter says if I send it to everyone I know within the next hour, I will be granted one wish that will come true within the next year.

There is a timetable for others, too. If I send it to three people, I will get what I want in six months. If I send it to six people, I only have to wait one month. If 15 people get it within the next hour, my wish will come true. Should I be very efficient and send it to 20 people, I’ll get what I want in three hours.

Shoot, I could be a millionaire shortly after breakfast.

But I won’t. I just sent it to the “delete” folder. It's on the scrap pile and in the garbage.

Something tells me God doesn’t believe in chain letters, anyway.

I just took a vote and neither does the snoring dog.

The early blogger

I started this blog only 11 days ago, so it's still pretty new to me.

The response has been great, even amazing at times. I appreciate your support. A number of you have told me you didn't even know what a blog was until I started writing one.

Here's the deal: You keep reading and I'll keep writing.

So far, the biggest challenge has not been what to write about -- although that does present a certain amount of pressure since this is called "Daily Gris." The challenge is enhancing my time management skills. Because it's my goal to have something posted by 6 a.m., I have been getting up at 5 a.m.

In that hour before dawn, as the coffee pot jump starts the day and I can hear the dog in the next room snoring at the foot of the bed, I'm in here blogging away.

It hasn't been that big of an adjustment. I'm an early riser anyway. For years, I've been getting up at 5. And sleeping late on the weekend usually means hitting the doze button until 6:30 or 7.

But, for the first week of "Daily Gris,'' people were asking me why I was getting up so early to write it every morning. In fact, one reader posted the comment: "Gee Ed, Blogging at four o'clock in the morning? Well, it's good to know I am not the only one up at weird hours of the night.''

At first, I'll admit I didn't understand what they were talking about. Then I noticed my own posts were being recorded at such oddball times as 2:41 and 3:13 a.m.

I know I was up early, but not that early!

Coming in from the parking lot the other day, I asked co-worker Ryan Gilchrest about it. Ryan is one of our editors who handles the newspaper's on-line content and coordinates all the blogs. He laughed and said he had noticed it, too. He said he thought the blog clock might have been set on Pacific Daylight Savings Time, and he would change the settings.

I guess that was the problem. So you can quit worrying about me not getting my beauty rest, because I certainly need a lot of that.

A peach of a place

You haven’t truly experienced a summer in Middle Georgia until you’ve eaten peach ice cream while sitting in one of the rocking chairs on the porch at Dickey’s Farms in Musella. There always seems to be a nice breeze up there, no matter how hot it is, and they have big fans to stir the air.

Dickey’s is a family operation and has been around since 1897, making it the oldest, continuously operating peach packing house in the state. It’s just a stone’s thrown from U.S. 341, about six miles north of Roberta, on the “main street” in Musella. I think the entire town must work there during the summer, and there’s an old store across the street that sells gas and looks like something right out of Norman Rockwell.

Dickey’s has been extra special to our family this summer. My son, Grant, started working there in May after completing his freshman year at Georgia College & State University. It’s the perfect job for a college student because peach season runs from about Mother’s Day until the end of July, about the same as his summer break.

Grant was born and raised in the heart of the peach belt, but he admits he didn’t know a lot about peaches when he started working there six weeks ago. Now he has become quite the expert. There are 19 different varieties of peaches, all ripening at different times during the summer. He might not be able to tell you the difference between a summer prince and a harvester quite yet, but he’s learning.

He loves working there, and they love him. He leaves the house early every morning and gets home late. He works hard, comes home tired and makes good money. He appreciates the opportunity the Dickey family has given him.

Grant works at the counter, selling peach ice cream. They sell other things up on the porch – boxes and bags of peaches, fresh corn and peas, along with a variety of peach products from peach bread, peach salsa and barbecue sauce, peach preserves, peach butter and peach jam.

But folks mostly come for the ice cream on these hot summer days. It’s cool and creamy, and those chunks of peaches were hanging in a nearby orchard just a few hours earlier. It’s that fresh. Grant was amazed when he learned people come from as far away as Atlanta to get it. At times this past Saturday, the line was all the way off the porch for ice cream.

If you get over to Dickey’s, make sure you say hello to Grant. He’s the one with the big grin on his face.

He’s not going around hungry this summer, that’s for sure.

http://www.gapeaches.com/

(Photos by Joel Edward Grisamore)

Handing over the keys

I am not sure how I am supposed to feel this morning. The company I have worked for more than half my life no longer exists. For the first time in my professional life, I belong to somebody else.

On Monday, papers were shuffled and votes were counted around a table in San Jose, Calif., and Knight-Ridder Inc., handed over the keys to the McClatchy Co.

A lot of parting shots have been fired at Knight-Ridder in these past few weeks and months, but I have held my tongue. No, I haven’t appreciated what the company had become in recent years, a place where bottom lines seemed more important than headlines.

It was sad to me. But you don’t stop loving a person just because they change. In many ways, Knight-Ridder had to change to survive.

When I was in journalism school at the University of Georgia, we used to fight to get jobs at Knight-Ridder newspapers. I consider myself blessed the Telegraph hired me, trained me, nurtured me and has supported me as I have chosen to live and work in this community.

Knight-Ridder allowed me to earn a living doing what I have always wanted – being a writer. It helped me provide for my family and plan for the future. It allowed me to travel and see places and do things I would never have had the opportunity to do otherwise. It brought some wonderful co-workers into my life who helped me grow as a person and as a professional. I am forever indebted.

Today, I will park in the same parking lot, walk through the same front door and up the same circular stairway. I will sit at the same desk and sip from the same water fountain down the hall.

But I expect the place is going to have a different look and feel. I expect morale is going to improve, and it will reflect in the product.

I will rejoice, too, with a lump in my throat.

Highway column stirs the memories

A woman stopped me at the grocery store Sunday afternoonon on the aisle by the dill pickles. She wanted to tell me how much she enjoyed last week’s column on Highway 41.

A week ago today, I rolled down the landmark highway from its urban trek through Macon and Houston County along its rural route to Vienna. I had intended to drive to Cordele to get a watermelon on this sentimental journey but I had to get back to Macon for an appointment.

It was a timely column, since this week marks the 50th anniversary of when President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed a law funding the U.S. Interstate Highway system.

I don’t hate interstates. I just consider them a necessary evil. As I stated in the column, there is a numbness to that kind of travel. The scenery rarely changes. As Charles Kuralt once said: "It makes it possible to go from coast to coast without seeing anything or meeting anybody. If the U.S. interests you, stay off the interstate."

I have had many comments from folks who said it stirred memories. One lady called me, crying over the phone. Her husband died a few years ago, and they used to travel U.S. 41 all the time. Others said they remember much of the scenery I described along that route. One said I passed her grandmother’s old house. Others remembered those summer fields of kudzu and roadside vegetable stands.

A man at my church related a story the late Joe Pruett used to tell. Pruett, who was in advertising in Macon, used to joke that growing up along Highway 41 near Cordele he and his friends used to sell sweet gum balls to Yankees and tell them they were porcupine eggs.

The lady in the grocery store said she particularly enjoyed the column because she and her husband had recently returned from a trip to Nova Scotia. He wanted to take the interstate the whole way. She preferred the back roads. So they did what it takes in any marriage – they compromised.

I hope to share other comments from readers later in the week.

The high school
reunion

I went to a high school reunion Saturday, and I had a terrific time.

I had a great time because it was not my own.

The reunion was in a different town for a different school, and it was nowhere close to the year I graduated from high school.

I was there as the guest of a former faculty member who was old enough to be my father. We left when he got tired, and I was ready to go, too.

I had a wonderful time because there was no pressure. There was no pressure to remember all those people 20 years and 40 pounds ago. There was no pressure to make conversation with people I once sat by in social studies, ate lunch with in the cafeteria and sweated through p.e. class with but have not honestly thought about since Dale Murphy was still playing center field for the Atlanta Braves.

There was no pressure to pull up in the parking lot driving a fancy car with a some Hollywood actress hanging off my arm and three of the smartest and most adorable kids in tow at the reunion family picnic.

There was no agonizing for weeks about what to wear, who to hug or slap on the back and how to sum up more than half my life in two minutes of small talk with somebody who barely knew my name in high school but suddenly seems interested in me now.

I was the proverbial fly on the wall. I was invisible, and loving it, dismissed as probably a poor spouse dragged there by his wife. All I had to do is sit back and take it all in. I watched the same high school cliques eventually get together. I watched some people, who came alone, looking around to try to find someone to talk to and sit with. A few of them had hurt looks on their faces.
Remember me? Uh, yeah ....uh ...(squinting at the name tag) ... Hi, Gerald! ... So good to see you. I think of you often. ...

People bob in and out of our lives. We move through the years, replacing one set of friends with another. If you have remained close to your high school friends, consider yourself lucky. Most of us don’t.

That's why we struggle through these reunions. We dread them when they come around every 5 or 10 years. Sometimes, we don’t even go.

It’s much easier when it’s not you own.

Rain, rain. Stick around

The sweetest sound in the world is a gentle summer rain on the roof.

I don't know if the rain we got last night was "gentle" but at least it was rain!!!

It has been a long time since I have been that glad to hear the thunder rolling and lightning popping. It was raining when we walked out of Porter Auditorium at Wesleyan College after a great performance of "Pippin" by students at MidSummer Macon's theater camp Friday night.

It has been so dry in Macon these past few weeks I was wondering if we had been annexed by nearby Dry Branch.

Did it rain at your house? How glad were you to get some drops in your flower bed?

I would like to know. So would the other readers. So please post your comments.

By the way, thanks for reading my blog. I just started it Monday, and it's off to a blazing start. I'll keep writing if you keep reading.

(Photo by Joel Edward Grisamore)

( Photo by Joel Edward Grisamore)

What makes you happy?

A few months ago, I read an article about a British scientist who had devised an index to predict the “gloomiest” day of the year. The winner was Jan. 23, when all the variables of weather, finances, habits and motivation converge to make it the most unhappiest day of the year.

The same scientist used the same formula to determine the “happiest” day of the year. And the winner is, you guessed it, June 23!

That’s today, folks. Put on your happy face.

There are a few forces working against me today. We’re in the dregs of summer and everything is hot and dry. The Braves are in last place, and their fans are starting to wear bags over their heads. The brakes on my car are starting to make an expensive noise.

But the good outweighs the bad. What makes me happy? I’ve got a good book to read and can look out my window every night and watch lightning bugs dancing across my front yard. Food is one of summertime’s greatest pleasures – I had my first delicious tomato of the year last night. I’m a candidate for some peach ice cream this weekend. I love watermelon and sweet corn, and they are both in abundance.

The happiest day of the year means the sound of children on the playground. It is swimming holes and bare feet in the grass and not getting dark until 9:30 every night. It is a dog who loves you because you scratch behind his ear.

Those are a few items contributing to my happiness index today.

Please post a comment on what makes you happy.

Gris and GMC faculty member Ben White

Congratulations! Now what?

I’ve sat through so many commencement speeches they’ve all begun to sound the same.

Usually, somebody stands up and starts with all the cliché advice.

Dream big. Reach for the stars. Be all that you can be.

This past Saturday, I had the honor of being the commencement speaker at graduation for Georgia Military College’s Warner Robins campus. I even got to wear a cap and gown, something I haven’t worn in years.

The graduating class was only 44, small by most college standards, but an impressive crowd gathered at the Homer J. Walker Civic Center to honor these new grads of the two-year school.

Earlier in the week, I had wondered what kind of advice I could give them. Some were older, already married with jobs. They were simply going back to get their degrees.

Here is some of the advice I shared with them:

• I told them to show gratitude. They did not make it to graduation day alone. They should thank their familes. Thank their teachers. Thank the friends and classmates who stuck by them.
• I told them to always look people in the eye when they are talking to them, that people love to hear the sound of their own name and, if they saw somebody without a smile, to give them one.
• I told them if they always told the truth, they wouldn’t have to remember everything they said.
• I said whenever they meet a veteran, they should shake his hand and thank him for his service to our country. And, if they see a man or woman wearing a military uniform, they should thank them, too. We are here because they are there.
• I told them prayer is the most powerful thing in the universe. I told them they should go to church every week. The Good Lord gives them a week, they can give him back an hour.
• I told them to never trust a blinker and to look both ways in everything they do.
• I suggested they never pass up a rest room. If they saw one, take advantage of it. You never know when you’re going to find another one.
• I told them state patrolmen already have heard every excuse, so they should save their breath.
• I told them although everyone remembers that Babe Ruth hit 714 home runs, he also struck out 1,330 times. You cannot have success without failure.
• I told them to 1) Have fun and 2) Be Good. I got this piece of advice from a local minister. He tells this to his daughters every time they leave the house. And by that he means this: Have fun, but not so much fun that it gets you in trouble. And be good, but don’t be so good that you don’t have fun.
• And I told them never to forget that we make a living out of what we get. We make a life out of what we give.

Finding the write stuff

The only thing better than being around young people is being around young people who love to write.

This is a lucky week for me. I’ve got eight bright teenagers in my creative writing class at MidSummer Macon.

Four of them are from Macon and one is from Atlanta. The other three live out-of-state and are visiting relatives. They are from Louisiana, Houston, Texas and St. Louis, Mo.

This is the seventh year I have taught at the annual summer arts camp at Wesleyan College. We are learning about writing in a room on the top floor of Tate Hall, with a huge oak tree outside our window and a large quadrangle below.

My class is in creative non-fiction. We talk about writing in the real world. I’ve had a number of students in the past who only wanted to write poetry or science fiction. They want everything to come right out of their heads. And that’s OK. But we don’t make up things in my class.

I tell them I get asked all the time if I ever think I’ll write a book of fiction. Maybe, I say. But I come across so many stories THAT REALLY HAPPENED. I don’t have to make anything up. Truth really can be stranger than fiction.

I tell them to be observant of the world around them. There are interesting things happening all around them, if they will simply open their eyes and ears. They can go out to find one story and trip over three others along the way.

Another point I try to make is that you never stop growing as a person, and you never stop growing as a writer. You will be a better writer tomorrow, next week, and next month because of your accumulation of life experiences. Don’t think you know it all when you’re 16. You still won’t know it all when you’re 60.

One of my students asked me about finding her writing “voice.’’ I told her it was a process. It would evolve and grow with her. When you’re young, you emulate other writers. I can remember reading great writers and copying down lines and phrases. I wasn’t stealing them. I was borrowing them. I used them to shape my own writing. I leaned on them until I had the confidence to walk through the world of words on my own.

Finally, I tell them Mark Twain gave the best piece of writing advice ever: “Write like you talk.’’ Writing should be as simple as conversation. One day you will find that voice, or it will find you. And you will know it.

Father of the Bride

Bob Setzer has officiated hundreds of weddings in his more than 25 years as a Baptist minister. So he’s seen plenty of nervous and teary-eyed brides.

It was much more personal this past Saturday afternoon, though.

“It’s the first wedding I ever attended where the minister and the bride shared the same handkerchief,’’ he said.

His daughter, Whitney, was married at Macon’s First Baptist Church, where Setzer has served as pastor for the past 10 years.

Whitney is his only child. He and his wife, Bambi, have been preparing all their lives for their daughter’s wedding day. They knew it would be emotional.

“Other people seemed to know better than I how impossible this was,’’ he said. “More than one asked with doubt in their eyes, ‘ “Are you sure you’re going to be able to do this?’ ”

Setzer said he has officiated at the funerals of church members who were also close friends.

“I learned long ago to do my crying before, or after the service, in order to fulfill my responsibility to the family and other mourners,’’ he said. “So while I knew officiating at my daughter’s wedding would be especially difficult, I thought I was equal to the challenge.’’

He underestimated how difficult that would be.

As he walked Whitney into the church at the top of Poplar Street, he could have floated down the aisle on the tears he was fighting back. Still, he felt a responsibility to do the best he could to distance himself from his feelings as a father and function as minister of the occasion. He thought he could make it through without being emotionally overwhelmed.

At the altar, Whitney, who was already weeping, began to sob. And that’s when Bob got very, very, very choked up. What pushed him over the edge was when he prefaced the vows by saying: “And Whitney, you have always been the apple of your father's eye. You always will be. But now your primary loyalty and love is not to me, but to your God and to your husband. Like every competent parent, your mother and I raised you up so in God's good time, we could let you go. We will miss you. But nothing could please us more than for you to have a happy, fulfilling marriage.”

Was there a dry eye in the church? I don’t think so. I felt a few tears rolling down my cheek. After the service, I told my wife it was one of the most beautiful weddings I have ever attended.

Good Timber

I had a wonderful Father’s Day. My three sons were all home from their busy summer schedules. They went to church with me. We had a nice lunch with my in-laws. The boys couldn’t wait to give me my Father’s Day present – an iPod!

I asked them if this officially made me the coolest dad on the planet. They said I won’t qualify as long as I’m still driving a mini-van.

I also got a new shirt. Both presents were special, but the greatest gifts of all were the notes I received from them.

This is what I gave my dad on Father’s Day. It is what he asked from each of his children. He’s always been that way. He doesn’t want a new tie or a cordless screw driver. The words of his two sons and three daughters are far more important to him.

So I wrote him a letter. And I didn’t pick out a fancy Father’s Day card. I wrote it on stationary I got from artist Butler Brown’s studio in Hawkinsville.

A few years ago, Brown painted a legendary tree that once stood along the side of the road of U.S. 41 near Perry. The tree was so majestic people used to stop and admire it. He called this painting “The Perfect Oak.’’

That’s my dad. He’s tall and sturdy. His his roots run deep. He provides shade in summer and warmth in winter. He has lived a long and good life. He has stories to tell. And those who have met him along the road do not pass under his branches without great admiration for the man.

J. Williard Marriott once wrote this poem. Whenever I read it, I think of my father.

Good timber does not grow in ease
The stronger wind, the tougher trees
The farther sky, the greater length
The more the storm, the more the strength
By sun and cold, by rains and snows
In tree or man, good timber grows.