Inspirations found from columns
By Staff
Scot Beard
While visiting my family in Huntsville this past weekend, I decided to look over the bookshelves for something to read before I went to bed.
The bookcase in my room was full of many books I had read in the past and several I had overlooked for many years.
On the bottom shelf was a book by Lewis Grizzard and I opted to read it for a few minutes.
In case you are unfamiliar with Grizzard, he was a columnist who often wrote hilarious stories about his hometown in Georgia.
As a child, my knowledge of Grizzard was limited to trips to the bookstore with my mother. His books often had titles such as "Don't Bend Over in the Garden, Granny, You Know Them Taters Got Eyes" and "Chili Dawgs Always Bark at Night."
When I was 10, I thought the titles were funny. At the age of 28 – and having recently acquired a taste for chilidogs – I found out, much to my wife's dismay, the titles also contained a grain of truth.
By the time I reached middle school I began reading a few of his books, which were collections of his columns.
His use of the language, ability to find humor in the strangest of situations and a Southern voice – instead of the mightier-than-thou tone of the northern columnists – impressed me. He had a new fan by the time I finished reading his column for the first time.
Unfortunately, Grizzard died in 1994. He left behind several bestselling books, many of which I have read.
The book I picked up the other night is titled "If I Ever Get Back to Georgia, I'm Gonna Nail My Feet to the Ground."
Somehow, I had managed to skip over this book several times, but I was glad I didn't this time. It is Grizzard's autobiography and it is a gem.
Reading about his desire to do nothing more in life than be a sportswriter for "one of the big papers in Atlanta" so he could get into sporting events for free has been entertaining. Reading about his passion for journalism has been inspiring.
In fact, the only thing in the book I can fault Grizzard for is his choice to attend the University of Georgia and his love of that institution. Oh, well, nobody is perfect.
While Grizzard has been a bit of a role model for my writing – I try to interject humor in most of my columns and everyone of my essays in freshman composition in college were nothing more than long jokes – I know I fall far short of his style.
While he will probably never be recognized among Ernest Hemmingway, Edgar Allen Poe or Walt Whitman as one of America's best literary minds, Grizzard was much more entertaining to read than any of those writers with the exception of Poe. To me, however, each of Grizzard's columns is a literary treasure.
I can only hope that some day one of my columns will inspire someone's writing half as much as Grizzard's has inspired mine.
