Happy birthday ... sort of

I would like to wish my father a happy birthday today.

Yes, it really is his birthday, and he is 82 years old, although the date on his birth certificate reads Nov. 1 and that’s the day we always celebrate.

But my dad was born on a cold, dreary night in Jamesport, Mo. It was the last night in October in 1924. He was the youngest of my grandparents’ three children.

A country doctor named Dr. Harris rode by horseback to the Grisamore farmhouse. He had been summoned by a neighbor’s party line on a battery-operated telephone.

It was a long and difficult delivery, and my father was a frank breech baby. He arrived in the world at about 11 p.m.

But the clock wasn’t the problem. It was the calendar.

Under no circumstances did my grandmother want her child born on Halloween, so she convinced Dr. Harris to change the date of birth to Nov. 1 on the birth certificate.

It's a story my family loves to share at this time of the year.

The blog goes on

It has been a rough last two weeks at my house, one of those times in my life when two weeks has seemed like two months.

That’s why my blog has been silent since Oct. 20.

For a stretch six days, I had both my parents in the hospital at the same time. We have had an endless parade of doctors, nurses, medical reports and machines. By now, I should qualify for my own parking space. I’ve been on that hospital elevator so many times I don’t even have to push a button. It already knows my floor.

Things are better, though still not completely settled. We've still got a long road ahead of us.

For those of you who have known what we have been through, I appreciate your prayers and concerns.

For now, Daily Gris is back.

My kingdom for a human

(Illustration courtesy of Slate magazine)

I don’t know anybody who appreciates talking to a machine.

You get a call, it’s a recording.

You call a number, you get a recording.

Dial this.
Then this.
Say yes.
Press # pound.
Just say no.
Jump through this hoop.
Do not pass GO. Do not collect $200.

It’s aggravating. It seems half the phone calls we get these days are recorded political messages from candidates.

We’ve been through all this before. I’m not going to rehash old arguments.

Like most everybody else, I want to talk to a live voice, a real person. If I could, I would want to be able to pinch their skin and have them say ''ouch!"

I mention all this to tell you about an annoying phone call I’ve been getting every day for the past six weeks. It’s a call to my cell phone. And it happens every afternoon, without fail. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

I know the number, so I usually don’t bother to answer when it shows up on the Caller ID. I just let it slide over to the voice mail.

It’s a law firm in Atlanta, and it’s a recording. It’s not even a real person doing the recording. It’s a computer-generated voice. The recording is only activated if I answer the phone and say something. If I don't say anything, it will not talk to me.

This law firm is looking for a person at the request of a client. This law firm believes it is calling the number of the person it is trying to locate.

It’s not, of course. It’s me. The recording has told me, time and time again, if I am not this person, to please call the law firm at a toll-free number.

I refuse. If a real person will call me, I will politely tell them they have the wrong number.

Friends have told me I ought to block the call. After all, it is very annoying.

Nah, what I really want is for them them to finally have a real person call me

I haven’t done anything wrong. Since when is not returning recorded voice messages against the law?

In the meantime, I hope this law firm spends hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars trying to find this person.

All it would take would be a phone call.

From a human being.

Malfunction Junction

WOODY MARSHALL, The Telegraph
Here’s one more reason why I hardly ever go through the I-75/I-16 interchange.

Out of habit, I go around it. After all, experience is the best teacher.

An 18-wheeler filled with butane lighters overturned at Malfunction Junction during rush hour Wednesday morning.

But the accident was more than just a flick of a few Bics.

It sent black smoke spiraling across the Macon skyline and a giant ball of fire that caused more than a few anxious moments.

It backed up traffic for hours on one of the nation's major interstates. Talk about a clogged artery.

I’ve written before about my aversion to the I-16/I-75 split. I avoid it if at all possible. It is the one of the worst examples of highway planning I have ever seen.

There are sharp curves, lane changes and too much decision-making for vehicles traveling at interstate speeds. It is compounded by drivers (and especially truck drivers) who are going too fast for conditions.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re heading I-75 northbound, I-16 westbound, I-75 southbound or I-16 eastbound, it is the confluence of a nightmare.

Pretzel logic.

Almost every time I travel it, I want to pick up my cell phone, call the architect and ask: WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?????!!!!!!?????

The redesign has been debated for years. I wonder if all parties are ever going to come to an agreement.

In the meantime, just call me Mr. Detour.

Soup's on

Over the past three months, my son, Grant, has acquired a few things most 19-year-old college sophomores would never dream of possessing. If e-Bay has it, chances are he's in on the bidding.

He’s not your typical shopper. He loves oddball stuff. He recently bought an ant farm, a piece of the Berlin Wall and a seat from the old Atlanta Fulton-County Stadium.

I saw him for a few minutes on Tuesday, and he couldn’t wait to take me upstairs to his apartment. He had a gift for me.

It was a soup ladle he had ordered off the Internet. But not just any soup ladle.

It had been autographed by “The Soup Nazi.’’

You have to be a Seinfeld fan to fully appreciate this. We are all huge Seinfeld fans at our house, and this was one of the classic episodes.

The sitcom character was based on a real New York City soup vendor named Al Yeganheh. His Manhattan restaurant is called Soup Kitchen International.

Yeganheh was immortalized by the Seinfeld series because of his strict rules for ordering soup. Patrons must be prepared to order, have their money ready, move directly to the left after ordering, stay in single file line, order other items (bread, crackers) when placing the soup order and no talking or public displays of affection in line.

The spoon was signed by Larry Thomas, who was cast as the Soup Nazi on the show.

He signed it for me: “Ed: No Soup For You!”

I’m going to add my ladle to my own collection. I have a piece of piece of the original hedges from Sanford Stadium in Athens, part of brick fireplace from the sharecropper’s house where Jackie Robinson was born in Cairo and a pen Tennessee Williams once used to sign an autograph.

Do or Digestive

I was sitting on an examining table waiting for the doctor. Every time I heard footsteps in the hall, I thought it might be him.

I didn't know whether to cross my legs or sit on my hands. These are not the most comfortable pieces of equipment. Too long to qualify as a chair. Too short for a bed.

Yes, there are always a few jitters at the doctor’s office.

The nurse came by to take my temperature, pulse and blood pressure. The pressure was a little higher than it should be.

“That’s because you’re at the doctor’s office,’’ she explained.

“But I’m not really nervous!’’ I said, biting my lip.

She left and closed the door. I was alone again. Waiting.

I was trying to get my mind off the idle moments by studying a chart of the digestive system, hanging on the back of the door.

There was the duodenum and a schematic section of the stomach wall.

I decided to pass the time by seeing how many words I could form out of a word:

DIGESTIVE
Dig
Diet
Dive
Is
It
Give
Get
Set
Tide
Side
Vet
Ed
Tie
Edit
Vest
Digest
Gest
Site
Die

I stopped there. That last one was not good vibes when you’re at the doctor’s office.

Lesson for journalism students

For the past week, we’ve been studying libel, slander, fabrication of news stories and other dirty words in the Mass Media Class I teach at Georgia College & State University in Milledgeville.

I’ve tried to provide the class with some examples. We’ve studied what constitutes a public figure and discussed that gray land of what you can and cannot say in a news story. (And what you have to be careful about saying in the chapter on political correctness.)

Of course, the credibility of journalism has taken some huge blows over the past several years. It’s unfortunate when the reading public has to wonder if what it is reading is actually true or if it is made up.

Sadly, I've seen it happen at my own newspaper. It hurt then. It still hurts.

I hope my stern warnings have had an impact on my class. After all, they are members of the cut-and-paste generation. And when we shifted from plagiarism – they’ve all signed a code of honor with the university – we moved into outright fabrication.

I have been showing my class the movie “Shattered Glass.’’ I figured it would be a more effective lesson than anything I could teach them out a textbook.

The movie is based on the true story of Stephen Glass, a reporter for The New Republic in the late 1990s, who made up events, quotes and subjects of his stories. The New Republic later determined that 27 of the 41 stories he wrote for the magazine had been fabricated.

Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.

As luck would have it

Several years ago, I interviewed a local magician about Friday the 13th.

He said we tend to magnify the cause and effect of life's bumps on Friday the 13th. If anything bad ever happens to us on a Friday the 13th, we blame it on that day. Likewise, we forget all those Friday the 13ths when nothing bad happened.

I’m not an overly superstitious person. I have been known to walk under ladders and step on cracks without giving it much thought. A broken mirror doesn’t bother me much.

I do, however, think about black cats crossing my path. Several years ago, my father and I were driving up to the mountains where we were building a cabin. Between Dawsonville and Amicolola Falls, a black cat ran out in front of our truck. We laughed about it at the time, but 30 minutes later my dad had an accident at the cabin and we spent the rest of the day in the emergency room.

I still think about that every time I see a black cat.

There was an interesting article in The Wall Street Journal two years ago about the loss of productivity in the American workplace whenever a Friday the 13th rolls around.

According to the story, some people are so paralyzed with fear they won’t venture out of bed on a Friday the 13th. Donald Dossey, founder of the Stress Management Center and Phobia Institute, estimated there is as much as $900 million in lost business revenue when 13 and Friday come together on the calendar. Some folks won’t travel or engage in business activities.

Dossey estimated between 17 and 21 million people are afflicted with paraskavedekatriaphobia, which is a phobia associated with Friday the 13th.

Have a nice day. Apparently, some of you really need it.

Think snow

Wednesday afternoon was a warm one in South Georgia. The high temperature reached up and smacked 84. Folks walked around in short sleeves and wiped perspiration from their foreheads, wondering if all those reports of there being only 75 more shopping days until Christmas could really be true.

After all, the gnats were still out in force. There were not as many of them hanging around as there were back in July. But they still haven’t checked out for the fall, and it’s almost mid-October.

As I reached to turn up the air conditioner in my car, I looked out the window.

I saw snow. It was everywhere.

Up north, in parts of Wisconsin and Minnesota, a cold front brought the first snowfall of the season on Wednesday.

The cotton patches along Highway 41 made it appear we already had some accumulation, too.

A beautiful blizzard.

Some folks love autumn because of the rainbow of colors. Reds. Yellows. The changing of the leaves can be so spectacular it takes your breath away.

But, out in the country, there’s something to be said for those snowy fields of cotton.

Thoreau-ing a tailgate party

I was strolling down East Montgomery Street in Milledgeville Tuesday afternoon when I passed in front of the library at Georgia College & State University.

There were several cars and trucks parked along the street, including an old, black Chevrolet pickup truck with an interesting sticker on the tailgate.

No, it had nothing to do with NASCAR, chewing tobacco or the Georgia Bulldogs. It didn’t say anything clever like: “A bad day fishing is still better than a good day at work.’’

Actually, I was surprised at how cultured it was.

It read: “I’m Thoreau-ing My Life Away.’’

Imagine that.

A Henry David Thoreau fan. A Walden lover. The owner was probably in the library reading Civil Disobedience.

If you’re interested in doing a little “Thoreau-ing” he now has his own blog, even though he’s been dead for 144 years.

Yes, that’s right. Some enterprising soul is blogging Thoreau’s journals on line.

Thoreau on a Chevy tailgate. I haven't seen everything yet, but I'm getting closer.

If these teeth could talk

OK, so I didn’t drive 128 miles from Macon to Royston on a Sunday afternoon just to see Ty Cobb’s false teeth.

But, hey, once I made it inside the Ty Cobb Museum I just had to take a peek at those dentures.

I can’t remember who told me about them. But after I heard about this most unusual piece of history, I put it on my list of “1,347 Things To See Before I Die.’’

Several years ago, I went to the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass. Of all the great history in that place, one of the most popular items on display is Bob Lanier’s size-22 shoes.

People love to see oddball items.

It’s the same way with Cobb’s bicuspids. “The Georgia Peach” had quite an impressive set of choppers.

The museum opened in Cobb’s hometown in July 1998. It has a nifty collection of other memorabilia that belonged to the greatest hitter who ever played the game.

Cobb’s 1907 American League batting champion medal is on display, along with an awesome array of bats, rare photographs and a great documentary film narrated by Larry Munson with special comments from Chipper Jones.

Still, one of the most popular items in the museum is Cobb’s dentures.

Some folks, like me, just have to see them.

If only they could talk ... oh, the stories those teeth could tell.

Yep, I'm gellin'

Ever meet people who tell you everything that ails them? It gets a little annoying, doesn’t it?

As a blogger, I promise not to sort through every little ache and pain. Nobody wants to read about bunions and lip fungus. Not to imply that I have either one of those. Yet.

But I do want to mention the terrible time I was having with my right leg last week. I had some swelling and alternated between pain and numbness.

There were times Wednesday and Thursday when I could barely walk. I called my father, a retired doctor, and asked if I could come by Friday morning and have him check it out.

I was convinced I had a blood clot. It was going to travel right up my leg and hit me in the heart. But I’ve heard my dad give me the old Mark Twain advice many times: “Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.’’

Most of the pain shooting straight up my leg was originating from the bottom of my foot, and he asked what kind of arch support I had in my shoes. The answer was none. I’ve always had “flat feet.’’ Maybe it finally caught up with me.

He said I needed some shoes with built-in arch support, and even suggested a brand, E.T. Wright, he has been wearing for years.

In the meantime, I made a date with Dr. Scholl’s. I went to the drug store, and I was absolutely amazed at the number of foot-care products there are on the market. It took up half the aisle.

And the majority of them were for arch-related problems. My guess is a few of you can relate to all this.

I bought some of these “gel” supports so, if you ask me if I’m gellin’ like the commercial suggests, I most certainly am.

In the few days that I’ve worn them, they have seemed to really help. The foot is starting to feel better, and the leg has followed suit. They have gotten to the ''root" of the problem.

Maybe I’ll be dancing again real soon.

My two cents worth ... plus 18

It was 1:30 p.m., and way past my lunch hour, but I had not managed to eat. I had been talking too much. Time had gotten away from me.

So I searched the street for a fast-food restaurant. Something simple. Something quick. Something …er, nutritious?

There it was. Backyard Burgers. I love their burgers but, more than that, I loved their blackened chicken sandwich.

I coasted to the drive-thru. Yes, m’am. I’ll have a No. 3 with a Coke.

I looked down at the drink menu. They only served Pepsi. Uggghhhh. OK, make that a Pepsi.

The combo was $5.89, plus tax.

That’ll be $6.30, sir. Please drive to the second window.

I looked in my wallet. There was a $1 bill. Oops! Where did that $5 bill go?

I found it. It had slipped into the “hidden compartment” at the back of the billfold.

That added up to $6. Now, how much change do I have in my pockets?

Left pocket. Ballpoint pen and a piece of paper with a telephone number scribbled on it. No nickels, dimes or quarters.

Right pocket. Roll of breath mints. Good for getting rid of French fry breath but no help paying for the meal.

Ah, I remembered the ash tray. I don’t smoke, so I use my ash tray for spare change. It has saved me on many occasions.

I reached into the tray with four fingers and pulled out nothing but copper.

What? Pennies?

No George Washington noses. No side profiles of Dwight D. Eisenhower. No Thomas Jefferson ponytails.

Nothing but a bunch of Abraham Lincolns.

Actually, I did manage to find a dime that had fallen on the floorboard. That left me to come up with 20 cents.

It was time for me to pull up to the window and pay. I hastily counted out 20 pennies.

I gave her the $5 bill and the $1 bill.

“Here is the rest,’’ I said, waiting down her palm with copper. “Sorry about the pennies.’’

She giggled. “No problem,’’ she said.

But I’m sure they were talking about me after I left. Yes, I'm almost certain they were laughing about the poor guy with all the pennies.

Sleepless in Atlanta

I haven’t exactly been losing any sleep over a study that came out last week, pronouncing Atlanta as the worst city in the U.S. for getting a good night’s sleep.

The study was conducted by a pharmaceutical company, which reported Atlanta’s stressful commute times, as well as high divorce and unemployment rates, placed the city at the top of the poor snoozing list.

Atlanta residents get an average of 9.7 days of sleepness nights per month.

This should be a subject that is very near and dear to my pillow since I spent the first night of my life in Atlanta. I was born at Georgia Baptist Hospital on an April afternoon, and I slept like a baby that night, best I can remember. (Of course, my parents didn’t sleep very well for the next several months. Newborns have a way of playing havoc with your sleep patterns.)

Oh, I have had a few unrestful nights in my life. Some of them involved trying to sleep in a motel room with a co-worker who snored. Some of them involved late-night indigestion or barking dogs or phone calls that shook me out of my slumber. More than a few sleepless nights have been the result of father/son camp-outs in the middle of the woods

Worst night sleep ever? Not counting all those sow-my-wild-oats adventures when I stayed out until the sun came up, it was probably when my father and I spent the night in a motel in Whitehorse, in the Yukon Territory province of Canada. I just couldn’t get over being in the northern hemisphere, when it’s still daylight at 2 a.m.

My worst night sleeping in Atlanta did not involve a motel. It involved trying to sleep in a car when I should have been in a motel. It was 10 years ago this month.

It was the night of Oct. 25, 1996, following Game 5 of the World Series between the Atlanta Braves and New York Yankees. To refresh your memory, it was the final game played in Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium. The Yankees won, 1-0, sending the game back to New York for Game 6. It was late and, rather than get a room for the night, I just went to the parking decks at the Atlanta Airport. I had a red-eye to LaGuardia that morning. Why check into a hotel for three hours sleep?

That was a most fitful night. It was cold. There were cars all around me. Horns. Car doors. Trying to recline in my bucket seat.

Trust me, you can’t sleep in a parking deck in Atlanta. I will never do it again.

The funeral procession

I remember the first funeral I attended as a small child. A relative had died, and we rode in the procession with the rest of the family.

I was sad because everyone else was grieving. I don't remember crying, though. Maybe I really didn't understand death.

What made the biggest impression on me that day was watching every car pull over as the line of cars in the funeral procession passed by slowly.

"Why are all the cars all pulling over to the side of the road?" I asked my mother.

"Out of respect,'' she said, softly.

I thought about that the other day when I was approached by a funeral procession traveling west on Highway 22 outside of Milledgeville.

I started to slow down. I tapped the brakes and prepared to pull over. But nobody in front of me or behind me was stopping.

Except for the police car, followed by the hearse, it was just another line of cars with their lights on.

I don't know the name of the deceased or where the procession was traveling. Construction workers didn't even bother to removed their hard hats.

I heard a friend of mine once say "the world ain't gonna stop when you die.''

Deliver us from evil

Body of gunman is carried from schoolhouse in Nickel Mines, Pa. (ABC News)

I wrote this in April 1999, just a few days after the school shootings at Columbine. My son, Grant, was 12 years old at the time, and a seventh-grader at Miller Middle School in Macon.

It has been seven years, and Grant is now a sophomore in college. Now it's my youngest son, Jake, who is 12 and a seventh-grader.

After Monday’s shootings at the Amish school in Pennsylvania – the nation’s third deadly school shooting in less than a week – I’m starting to get that lump in my throat again.

DELIVER US FROM EVIL
Sunday, April 25, 1999
(Excerpted from Ed Grisamore column)

We ride to school each weekday morning down familiar streets.

The view never changes. The route is rather routine.

Yet the journey is always different.

Sometimes, my 12-year-old son and I swap stories. Other times, we listen to the radio. We laugh. We talk. We reflect. We communicate.

But, after the events of this past week, the ride has consumed an eerie grip of fear. It's not easy keeping my hands on the steering wheel when my head is light and my heart is heavy.

Oh, how I wish we could change the subject back to baseball.

Now, when I drop him off and watch him climb those seven brick steps, there is a lump in my throat the size of a baseball.

It is no longer simply enough to worry if your child has studied for his social studies test or remembered his lunch money.

He will be behind those schoolhouse doors for seven hours. In these troubled times, we must live with the paranoia and endure a deep fear that someone might start pulling a trigger.

From the time we give them roots to the time we give them wings, we protect and over-protect the lives of our sons and daughters.

We child-proof our homes, strap them in car seats and make them wear helmets on their bikes and while waiting for the pitch at home plate.

We are forever sounding the alarms of everyday life.

Chew your food so you don't choke.

Know what to do in a tornado drill.

Don't talk to strangers.

Don't smoke cigarettes.

We are conditioned to shield them from everything, from ultra-violet rays to ultra-violent TV
shows.

Now it is shocking to be faced with terrorism in our schools.

Back at the Blog Cabin

Well, I’m back at the blog cabin. No, I didn’t really go fishing. Somebody asked me yesterday how they were biting. I just laughed.

Actually, I took a few days of because I hit the wall a couple of weeks ago. I’ve been going non-stop this fall. I needed a little R&R and to whittle down a rather long honey-do list.

I doubt some of my co-workers at the Telegraph even noticed I was gone. I’m never at the office much anyway. I’m a moving target. I’m not sitting behind that desk unless I need to be. I will be on the road most of the afternoon today, too.

A lot can happen when you’re out for a week. The e-mailbox overfloweth and there’s a pile of phone calls to return.

Let’s see. While I was “gone fishin’’’ the world continued to spin off its axis without me. Who would have ever thought eating spinach would be like playing with a rattlesnake? That’s one of my favorite vegetables, and now I’m afraid to stick a fork in it.

Same goes for oysters, too. Another alert has been issued. People are getting sick and dying. I never eat oysters raw anyway. I cooked a batch at the beach in early June and spread them on some saltine crackers with Tabasco sauce. It was heavenly.

The gods have gotten a little crankier. Suddenly some folks would have you believe Jim Marshall is more conservative than Ronald Reagan. In a new report, Atlanta has been rated the worst city for “sleeping” in the U.S. (Makes me want to go take a nap.) Another study is trying to pin the blame on some behavior problems in children on whether they've had their tonsils removed.

On Friday, a small airplane made an emergency landing on I-75 just a stone's throw from the neighborhood where I used to live. I'm still shaking my head and wondering how nobody was hurt -- or killed.

I’m trying to hang on for dear life on this crazy planet. I saw a commercial over the weekend where Oral B has introduced a new toothbrush that has a “computer” in it.Tells you when you're not brusing hard enough. wonder if it crashes, too.

I'm sure English teachers everywhere are rejoicing now that Neil Armstrong’s missing “a” has been found when he planted his big toe in all that moon dust many moons ago. Frankly, I haven't been losing a lot of sleep over it for the past 37 years, and I don't even live in Atlanta.

But the worst thing that happened to me on my "fishing trip" was getting a letter from the AARP. Yep, they now have my name in their database, and they’ve already started recruiting me.

Ouch.