October Blessings

 

 

It’s the most wonderful time of the year on our precious island, y’all.

It is fall, after all, and with the mighty month of October comes three of our most prized and esteemed customs.

Number one, well, it’s the ability to finally crack a window without withering in the gosh forsaken South Georgia heat.

Number two, the McGladery Classic starts October 22^nd. This PGA tournament is a labor of “Love”- get it- of two of our hometown heroes and Georgia boys, Davis and Mark Love. But let’s face it, it’s our labor of love as well, seeing as everyone from our community shows up to show off our beautiful seaside pearl of an island to people from all over the world. This, folks, is where we shine; this is when the universe gets to see Southern hospitality at its genteel and absolute best.

Now, Number three, GA/FLA weekend starting October 31st, is and has and always will be one of my favorites. But I know there are many of you out there who disagree. This is because, for locals at least, it’s the time of year we hold our collective breath…and noses…and hope for the best. Because every blessed year-after the coeds, “party like it’s 1999” alums and rabid dawg fans have left the island in the dust with their UGA flags waving in the slightly cooled ocean wind- we are the ones who have to smell, pick up and step over all of the fast food trash bags, crushed beer cans and the occasional drunk person sleeping one off on “frat” beach.

I will confess; it is a bit frightening; pondering that these keg-standing, trash-wielding young people are, in fact, our future leaders, the movers and the shakers, the ambassadors if you will for the new generation who will someday decide our fate.

But I don’t look at it that way at all. It’s funny how with time we all forget we were once were keg swilling coeds, still are “party like it 1999” alums every now and then, and always will be rabid dawg fans just like we were in our youth.

I enjoyed a few outings myself at “the world’s largest cocktail party” as a UGA student 20 some years ago and still tell stories about it. I actually think Rex Edmondson, a 1950 UGA grad and famous newspaper man described it more accurately when he said GA/FLA weekend is, “the annual celebration of the repeal of prohibition.”

And speaking of famous newspaper, UGA grad, dawg loving Georgia boys, you can’t talk Georgia football without talking some Lewis Grizzard. Or, as I recently learned, golf. And golf on a Sea Island course, in particular.

I know most of you know Forest Brown, long time island resident and owner of the UGA loving establishment Brogen’s. I’ve had the privilege of getting to know him, and he tells the best stories about the bar, the football games and the fight songs, the rich island history and its folklore. But my absolute favorite Forest story is how Lewis Grizzard, after a round of golf, would play for hours on end on the same shuffle board that’s stood in Forest’s restaurant in the village since 1983.

Yes, our Lewis Grizzard also loved golf and the Sea Island courses that now host the big PGA players from all over the world. I think they would appreciate this story, from a column he wrote about a round he played at the Island Club, right across the street from Seaside, the site of the McGladery.

Here you go:

 It was a lovely morning, having warmed to the low 70s as I approached the tee. I was wearing an orange golf shirt, pair of Duckhead khaki slacks and my black and white golf shoes, the ones my dogs have not chewed up yet.

I was first on the tee.

“What are you going to hit?” asked Matthews.

“None of your business,” I said.

We were playing for a lot of money.

O.K., so we weren’t playing for a lot of money, but you never tell your opponent what club you’re hitting.

“Tell us,” said Jarvis, “or we’ll tell everybody how you move the ball in the rough when nobody’s looking.”

“Nine-iron,” I said.

The green sloped to the right. I said to myself, “Keep the ball to the left of the hole.”

(Actually I said, “Please, God, let me get this thing over the water.”)

I hit a high, arching shot. The ball cut through the still morning air, a white missile against the azure sky. (That’s the way Dan Jenkins or Herbert Warren Wind would have described it.)

The ball hit eight feet left of the pin. It hopped once. It hopped again. It was rolling directly toward the hole.

An eternity passed.

It has a chance to go in, I thought. But that’s not going to happen, of course, because I’m terribly unlucky and I’ve done some lousy things in my life and I don’t deserve it to go into the hole.

It went into the hole.

A “1.”

It was a joyous moment when my first hole-in-one fell snugly into the hole. But the best moment came at the next tee, the par four, 13th.

For those non-golfers, the person with the lowest score on the previous hole gets to hit first on the next hole.

I strode to the tee with my driver, teed up my ball and then said to my opponents, “I think I’m up, but did anybody have a zero?”

Love that man. Not just because he is, of course, one of THE best Southern humorists of all time. But because he bled Red and Black no matter what and loved Georgia, our island and the South as much as every single one of us.

He was the fan who on game day, “said the blessing before lunch and thanked the Lord for 3 things: fried chicken, potato salad and for the fact that He allowed me to be a Bulldog. And dear Lord, bless all those not as fortunate as I.”

Lewis was also the only man who could describe a Hail Mary pass, a last minute 60 yard field goal or a comeback bulldog win from the trenches like this: “I hugged perfect strangers and kissed a fat lady on the mouth. Grown men wept. Lightning flashed. Thunder rolled. Stars fell and joy swept through followed by a hurricane of unleashed emotions.”

Enjoy October, friends. And don’t forget to say your prayers…..and count your blessings that we are lucky to live in a place as great as this.