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.

A Redneck Review

previously published in Coastal Illustrated on Oct. 31, 2012

 

Words of Wisdom from the Robertson Clan

            I’m tired; tired of fashion conscious vampires, relentless zombies, underage binge drinking Manhattanites, and Nancy Grace.

Pop-culture these days has left me scratching my head, covering my ears, and, for the first time in a decade, going to bed without turning on the TV after chewing on 4 ounces of dark chocolate with a pot of my peppermint tea.

             That was until I met the Robertson’s. For those of you who’ve had no introduction, I will attempt to fill you in. Phil, the Robertson patriarch, a former college quarterback from Monroe, Louisiana, left a coaching job to get back to the swamp and to his roots….making duck calls out of cedar trees and hunting birds in the bayou. With the help of his sons, Willie (CEO), Jase, and Jep, and his brother Si, Phil turned his passion into a thriving, multi-million dollar family business.

Enter the cable channel A&E, the title “Duck Dynasty”, two generations of rednecks, and a steady stream of no nonsense advice, and you’ll witness the deep South has it’s never quite been portrayed: stripped down and naked as a jay bird- no sappy caricatures or overly sugary accented diatribes…just an honest, beard wearin’, boot peddlin’, mud lovin’, squirrel eatin’, and fun stompin’ insider look at a serious money makin’ merry band of family centric country folk.

And I’ll admit it. Fried bullfrog licking, skinned squirrels, beaver pelts, fish gut pullin’, and dynamite explosions aside, oh what I’d do to be one of them.

Week after week for two seasons now, I have turned off, tuned in, and fell in love with this quirky family as they’ve given more priceless advice (served with a hefty side of knee slappin’ humor) than Oprah, the ladies from “The View”, Anderson Cooper, Mr. Clean and Martha combined.

And to think they never travel North of Shreveport.

So here are a few lessons I have learned from “Duck Dynasty”-TV’s most entertaining, lovable, scruffy, sweet tea drinking- from abnormally large Mason jar, I might add- clan:

First up, of course… since it’s the South, food:

As grumpy, ponytailed wearing, Tupperware tea cup toting, ‘Nam veteran, and Phil’s brother Si likes to say, “when the grub runs out. That’s when things get tough around the house.” And no one knows this more than Miss Kay, Phil’s wife, who believes way deep down beneath her apron covered bosoms that a way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. But said man’s stomach has to be mighty tough since all sorts of chopped up, bone-in, and fresh killed critters will be going straight into it.

Not only does she believe squirrel brains make you smarter and that gator balls are even tastier when not in season, she swears that food can keep the young one’s mind off that dreaded hormonally induced idea of “only sex, sex, sex, sex.” She explains this to her 18 year old grandson’s girlfriend in the kitchen over a pot of freshly whisked roux….stirred with what appears to be a shovel straight from the garden.

“Nowadays it’s all about sex. That’s all that’s important. I’m about to bestow a little knowledge on these kids. There’s breakfast, lunch, dinner, special snack night, popcorn night, chip and dip night. That’s what you need to think about. It never hurts to have a good pan of cornbread around, either.”

No wonder her husband Phil always says it doesn’t matter if a woman “may be ugly but if she cooks squirrels and dumplin’s, that’s the women you go after.”

Trust me, I have written all of this down in order to scare the living daylights out of my children. Fear is a rational deterrent and as Phil told his grandson one day in the boat: “better a good day of fishin’ than a lifetime of crabs.”

But Miss Kay is not the only Robertson to know her way around the kitchen, or in Si’s case, around a hot pad on a camouflaged, airbrushed, Duck Commander RV.

“I am the MacGyver of cooking. If you bring me a piece of bread, cabbage and a coconut, mustard greens, pig feet, pinecones- hey, it’s good for the colon-and a woodpecker; I will make you a good chicken pot pie.” That’s great and all but after serving the boys his ‘Nam Surprise (pork & Beans, Spam, and hot sauce), even Si had to admit it “literally, back fired on me” if you know what he means. So after berating the guys about not knowing how to handle their beans and complaining about an intestinal horror show, Si ends up riding shot gun solo with a hermitically sealed helmet on an ATV behind the RV.

He’s also the one who claims to have never been in an auto accident.

“You’ve never even hit a deer,” asks his nephew, Jase.

“That ain’t a wreck. It’s food on the table, Jack.”

Next up in life lessons- how to love, work, and be somewhat civil with your family- because you can’t pick them off, one by one, from a duck blind, anyway…no matter how high you’re up in the sky with a free flowing Keurig and central heating and AC.

            My favorite “character” without a doubt is Phil’s son, Jase, the Duck Commander’s chief duck call expert and second-in-command to his brother Willie, a redneck who ”married a yuppie, lives in the suburbs” and is now scared of flying opossums, rigged-up racing lawn mowers, and manual labor.

            Jase, on the other hand, has never met a rodent he didn’t like. After hearing the “pitter, patter of little feet” at the Duck Commander Warehouse, he takes a hand saw to the ceiling.

            “That’s a U.V.,” he tells his co-workers, all motors running. “An Unidentified Varmint. Is this varmint domesticated? Is this varmint a nuisance? Is this varmint something I can eat for lunch?”

            But he is also the voice of steady reason:

“Having your brother as your boss is a lot like dating your cousin….a little weird.”

“I hate lawn mowers (as well as parallel parking and four-way stops.) Let’s get rid of them all. If you combine the time you waste cutting the grass with the time spent shaving your face, we’d have gotten to Venus….or we could be doin’…. whatever.’

Referring to his brother’s love of Ninja’s:  “Willie doesn’t have the body type to wear a leotard. When he takes off runnin’, he looks like two opossums fighting over a dead squirrel in a toe sack.”

“I’ve got a great filing system. It’s my retrieval system that sucks.”

And my absolute favorite: “When you don’t know what you are doing, it’s best to do it quickly.”

             Yes, words to live by my friends and when you are at a loss for words, never fret, here is a quick Robertson Glossary that may come somewhat close to saying exactly what you mean:

A Terrible Situation: “It’s like hide the puppies bad.”

Things are Looking Up: “Now we’re cooking with peanut oil.”

A Lazy Co-Worker: “He’s like a blister who shows up when the works all gone.”

A Good Time: “Funner than chunckin’ rocks at a sign.”

Too Fancy: “It’s got more sparkles than most Las Vegas showgirls.”

Fighting Words: “Ready to scratch some gravel with him.”

The God’s Honest Truth: “You never insult a man’s beard. You get thunder or lightening, either one.”

            I can’t help it, but I love the Robertson clan. They remind me, in Willie’s own words, that friends and family are like “having a great pit crew. They make you feel like you’ve won even though you lost…and they’re better than a trophy any day.” So, maybe what’s so delicious about this Louisiana Bayou family is they speak the truth straight from their camouflaged hunting vested hearts.

And yes, maybe we take the people we are closest with for granted, but in the end we always come back together…whether on a duck blind, over supper, or at a family yard sale with a bucket of gumbo and half a dozen mounted squirrels on a piece of scrap wood.

            As Phil reminds us, “we don’t need a world full of straight A students...I’m an ole C average man myself. Si, he’s probably a C minus.” But they are all A plus in my book on sound advice and common sense, not every Wednesday at 10 pm, but every single day of the week.

            Bite that bullet, y’all. See you at the beaver dam. Ka-pow.

 

Southern Summer Memories...on a Stick

                                 previously published April 25, 2012 for www.thesouthernc.com


"You're dripping," I tell my daughter, as I open the back door and shoo her outside to the porch.  I smile at the nostalgia of the words from my childhood, not necessarily the drops of sugared popsicle that now dot my hardwoods from the kitchen to the den and back again. 

Yes, summer is almost officially here, in all its bug biting, sweat sopping glory. Why do we get so excited about the three hottest months of the year when our hair tends to frizz, our clothes like to stick, and the mosquitoes love to nip at our skin? 

Maybe because summer simply reminds us of our youth; that special part of the year that couldn’t come fast enough, when time slowed down, little things mattered, and nothing was more fun than riding your bike up and down the street.

Not to mention, who doesn’t love lightening bugs in jars, bare feet, the slam of a screen door, and ice cold popsicles melting down your arm before you can finish them.

These are the days summer's made of.

So if you are trying to beat the heat this summer go ahead and make something that is sticky sweet and fun to eat.  You may never be ten again, but there will always be a reason and a season to act like it.

Lavender Lemonade Popsicles

Now, we all know a watched pot never boils, and neither does a watched pot filled with:

      A gallon of water
      A vanilla bean
      6-8 sprigs of lavender
      3 cups of sugar
      2 cups fresh lemon juice
      ½ cup orange juice

Bring all of these ingredients together in a pot and start the boil. Go ahead and do whatever you do while you’re hanging out in your kitchen, like reorganizing your junk drawer, rinsing and labeling your fruits and veggies, or standing in tree pose, like me, over the stove flipping through a People magazine.  Whatever you do though, don’t venture too far because as soon as it does boil, it won’t take long before “thy cup runneth over”, if you know what I mean.  Here is the part when you turn off the heat, let it cool on the stove to room temperature, and then take out the bean and strain the plant matter because no one really wants to wear that in their teeth.

Once your lemonade has cooled, it’s time to pour the mixture into a popsicle mold or if you don’t have one there is nothing wrong with going old school.  It actually makes them taste better.  Just pour the lemonade into a small paper or plastic cup, cover with aluminum foil, then stick a spoon or a popsicle stick down the middle and freeze for four hours or until hard.  You can always run a little warm water on the cups to loosen the popsicle so it pops right out.

Now, here is the very special part for the 21 and over crowd.  You can always use the mixture to make Lavender Lemonade Martinis.  Mix two parts lemonade and one part vodka over ice in a cocktail shaker.  Drain from ice into a sugar rimmed martini glass and enjoy! Cheers to summer! Hurry on up and get here!

***Join THE southern social network site and brainchild of Cheri Leavy and Whitney Long, by visiting www.thesouthernc.com and sign up to receive their weekly newsletter hightlighting all the things we love about the South.  You will find me there as a regular contributing writer so look out May 9th for a new piece connecting stories with food, called Strawberry Pickin' and BBQ Chicken.

Hunker It Down, One More Time

"We happy few, we band of brothers. For he to-day that sheds his blood with me, shall be my brother...."

Shakespeare, Henry the V, Act IV, 1415

Women of the South are called "Steel Magnolias," meaning we can embrace the very beauty seen in nature in our femininity, our manners, and our sense of decorum, and harness it within ourselves, but still be every bit the force that Mother Nature expects us to be: fierce, strong, resilient and, depending on our brand of mascara, waterproof.

There really isn't a term designated, as far as I know, for Southern men. When we think of women being Steel Magnolias, it almost implies our male counterparts can only excel at all things physical: a quarterback sack, chopping wood, making a grilled cheese sandwich, or taking out ten extra tall kitchen Hefties to the curb in one trip....all with one hand.

It's like if we give them an emotional task like dealing with a crying, hysterical female, they might as well be reduced to something akin to a flour sifted roux- a thin, light and simple staple that, in a matter of minutes, is required to painstakingly manipulate itself into a thick substance that will transform the bland into earth-shattering greatness. We all know the odds of that working out. Only, I don't know if that assumption is entirely fair.

Case in point: Larry Munson.

The Minnesota- born sports broadcaster who was the radio announcer, or more accurately the voice behind the Georgia Bulldogs for 43 years, passed away Sunday, November 20 at the age of 89 from complications from pneumonia. It was a sad day, as anyone who grew up listening to him on game day will tell you.Here was a man who was fanatical about a football team as most people are about their religion. He was biased, but not a fault. It was his undying loyalty for the team that drew him to his fans, and in turn, it was his enthusiasm that lifted them up in good times and the bad. His passion for the Dawgs was infectious and he wasn't scared to lay it out there for everyone to see.

Take, for instance, November 8, 1980 in Jacksonville, FL."Buck back, third down to the 25! To the 30! Lindsay Scott! 35, 40! Lindsay Scott, 45, 50! 45,40! Run Lindsay! 25! 20! 15! 10! 5! Lindsay Scott!! Lindsay Scott! I can't believe it. I broke me chair. A metal steel chair with a five inch cushion. I broke it. The booth fell apart. The stadium,well, the stadium fell down. Now, they have to renovate the thing. They'll have to rebuild it now. This is incredible....Man some property will be destroyed tonight! Dawgs on top. We were gone. I gave up, you did, too. We were out of it and gone. Miracle!

Lindsay: 93 yard touchdown. Score: Georgia 26-Florida 21.

Even though Munson was born in a state that you very well might lose your nose, a few fingers, and a key that snaps off in your car door on a blistery winter day, he really did embody what it means to be a Southern man. He was strong and unconventional. He called things as he saw them, even if the most die-hard of fans...or coaches...didn't want to hear it. He could get caught up in a whirlwind of an emotional moment and put into words a sentiment that as a Bulldog Nation we were all feeling but could never express as eloquently and sincerely as he could on a split seconds notice.

Take for instance, November 13, 1982.

"It's fourth down...ball on the 21 and they have got to get to the 4 for the first down. I know I'm asking a lot of you guys...but hunker it down, one more time! The Dawgs broke it up...23,22, and 21...clock running, running. Oh look at the sugar falling out of the sky. Look at the sugar falling out of the sky!"

Score: Georgia 19-Auburn 14, guaranteeing the Dawgs a trip to the Sugar Bowl.

People like to say men are incapable of the heavy stuff, the stuff of the heart that doesn't require actually lifting, like a sofa or a 60 pound bar bell loaded with 150 pounds of extra weight. Naw, not at all.

For me, these past few months, actually many years, have proven that assumption false.

See, like Larry and his sideline man "Loren, whatta you got?" I have seen camaraderie...men in the trenches...a band of brothers that when things get tough, they not only show up, but they say the right things. They rally around and admit, like Larry, things don't look so good right now, but I am here in the huddle with you, so let's just hunker down, get on through it.

My husband grew up with a "band of brothers" on the island. Lane Moore, Bowen Freeman, Bird Lynch, Patrick Tolleson, Jason Futch, Trey Brunson, Buddy McNeese, Brookes Haistens, Robert Malone, Paul Thompson, Doug Trowell,Kip Banker, John FitzGerald, just to name a few.

They have remained close and still get together a few times a year for weddings, baby showers, Georgia/Florida game and reunions. Now, they gather round for that real life grown up stuff we all want to avoid but inevitably have to face head on, one day. For this particular band of brothers, it's been quite an emotional past couple of years. Instead of baptisms and birthday parties, they have the unfortunate task of burying their mothers and fathers and taking on burdens they always knew would come but never realized how soon. But still, they show up.

Since Shakespeare wrote about the "warrior" band of brothers almost six hundred years ago, the meaning has become much more universal. It is about a group of men, yes, steely in exterior and conviction, but devoted and loyal to the friendships they have formed over a lifetime and unashamed to admit how much they mean to one another.

I have seen these men cancel family trips, postpone important business meetings, weep at the graves of their friends families, and simply "show up" when they needed each other the most with a beer in hand and a funny story to tell.

Case in point: November 18, 2011. Lane's mom,Sandra Shell Moore's graveside service.

As Lane and his wife, Alicia were leaving the cemetery after the service, they paused in their car one last time to look at the casket before it would be lowered into the earth.

Lane noticed the flowers all around the tent and realized the condolence cards were still attached to them. He started to worry about the notes on the flowers that people had taken the time to write about his mom and was concerned about how he would be able to thank them properly. He had never done anything like this before. He called his friend Bowen who was still at the service and, unfortunately, had been through similar circumstances when his Mom, Mari, passed away a year and a half ago.

"Don't worry," Bowen told Lane. " I'll make sure it's take care of."

It's amazing, these "brothers." They have been together through the best of times and "hunkered down" through the worst. If Southern women are Steel Magnolias, then these Southern men are Gentle Warriors and most importantly, when it counts, they know how to be, at the very core, lifelong and everlasting friends.

Football Figures

I just love football season, don’t you? What’s not to love? There’s the name calling and the obnoxious drunk people falling down in the parking lot before the players even reach for their helmets, not to mention the large grease stains on your best blouse from the fried chicken, and the heartburn from all the pulled pork you inhaled off the back of a pick-up truck before kickoff. I can practically smell the cheap bourbon wafting through the air as we speak.No, seriously y’all, I really do love it, especially college football and tailgating. See, down here it’s not just a sport, but a way of life. Since UGA is my dad’s alma mater, I’ve been tailgating in Athens since I was, as my Mom likes to say, knee high to a duck. So, in 1990, when I showed up as a freshman at my dorm room at Oglethorpe, I couldn’t wait to experience life, a.k.a. football, as a bona fide Georgia Bulldog out on my own. I’m still not sure how I got out of there alive.

When I say college football is a way of life, I really should say it’s more of a religion. It’s a place where thousands of screaming, but normally sane, human beings with painted faces worship together at the edge of one hundred yards of well kept Bermuda. Fight songs are as sacred as hymnals and a Bloody Mary can erase all of your sins from the previous night.

When I was at Georgia, the boys who rarely made their 7:50 a.m. class all week actually got up early on a Saturday and put on a button down shirt and a tie. The girls put on their best dress that was at least long enough to smuggle in some bourbon taped to the inside of their thigh. It was absolute chaotic madness -- just good ole blood pumping, adrenaline driving, who cares how we feel the next morning, fun.

I really miss those days; especially now, since I’ve had two little ones and my hips are as wide as a field goal post. Back then, I could eat about five pimento sandwiches (the ones with the crust cut off) and two pieces of fried chicken, drink three beers and still feel good walking down Baxter in my size six dress. Now, if I eat one piece of fried chicken, I have to fast for a week on Slimfast shakes, walk forty-five minutes on the treadmill, and remember not to breathe too deeply because I really don’t want to unbutton the top button of my pants.

The other day I was in Tibi looking for something to wear to a local function. I had the place pretty much to myself, and was leisurely perusing the racks at the right of the store until a cute, young college girl came in with her boyfriend in tow to find something to wear to a sorority party after the next week’s football game. Some dress must have caught the guy’s eye near where I was standing, because next thing I knew, he was headed my way. That was until I heard the sound of a throat clearing from the other side of the room. “Those are the big sizes, honey,” she says and dives into the sample size rack. “Oh, you just wait,” I wanted to tell her, but I stopped. She’ll find out for herself soon enough.

Were my feelings hurt? Sure. But I just did what any self-respecting mom nearing her forties would have done: I crossed the streets to Gnat’s and ordered a side of fried pickles, some sweet potatoes fries with ranch, and a chili dog with slaw. I felt a lot better after that.

I never used to have a problem keeping off weight. As a child, my nickname was “String Bean.” I hated it, absolutely hated it. Now I just might do anything to get it back. Well, except train for a marathon. I actually did try the running thing once. It was fine until the day I was passed by a ninety year old man and his 300 lb. nursing aide. And if that wasn’t humiliating enough, a really fat cat and her litter of kittens weren’t too far behind (and I swear one of those kittens actually smirked at me as he went by.)

Even in middle school, my dad used to taunt me every time I reached for a Little Debbie out of the snack drawer. “That brownie’s going straight to your hips one day,” he’d tell me cheerfully, all the while inhaling an entire bag of Lay’s potato chips. Lo and behold, he turned out to be right. (And don’t you just hate it when that happens?) What really stunk was that not only did those brownies go straight to my hips and thighs, they decided to stay there and pucker.

See, along came my two new annoying roommates, Estrogen and Progesterone, and even after 26 years we still don’t get along that well. Overnight my upper thighs blew up into two giant Little Debbie Swiss Roll cakes. And since then, I’ve also acquired two rather substantial Oatmeal Crème Pies on my backside.

So I’ve finally graduated to the “big girl” sizes but that’s fine with me. I actually really like my hips and my thighs. They’ve seen and done a lot over the years since I was as skinny as a string bean. They’ve resulted from eating pizza in Rome, drinking tequila in Mexico, and sipping daiquiris in the Caribbean. They’ve even helped me with the birth of my two greatest treasures in this world: my girls. I’ll admit they could be a bit smaller, but they sure have been good to me over the years. As my little five year old friend Ella Moore told me the other day, “I’m a cookie dough eater. So what?”

Now, Ella weighs as much as a 2 lb sack of flour, but I couldn’t agree with her more. I also happen to be a cookie dough eater. I love pimento cheese sandwiches with the crust cut off, fried chicken, cold beer, Bloody Marys, and football too.

If you see me attempting to jog on Sunday after game day, please just try not to laugh at me when you blow by. Twenty years may have passed since I showed up at Oglethorpe with my size six dress, but like your average college freshmen, I still like to have some good ole blood pumping, adrenaline driving, who cares how we feel the next morning, fun. Well… every now and then, that is.

***And speaking of tailgating, here’s an interesting, though morbid, fact: Tailgating can be traced back to the Battle of Bull Run and the start of the Civil War. Union followers showed up with food and drink to watch the fighting, yelling, “Go Big Blue!”