Golf, The Real Redneck Sport

Folks that don’t play golf tend to perceive it as a game for uppity people. After all, playing golf takes money. You either pay a membership fee, often hefty, or you pay every time you want to play a round.

Golf courses have clubhouses. Clubhouses can be very nice buildings with private locker rooms, fine dining and lots of rather expensive equipment. There are entire communities of rather fine homes built on golf courses, world-wide. The occupants of such opulent abodes surely have money.

Indeed, in many cases, they do have money. Lots of money. Which makes them… rich rednecks.

Reality check: the reason you don’t find many pool halls anymore? All those people are now on the golf course.

Golfers are crude, foul-mouthed, and loud. They show up at the golf course driving their pick-ups with coolers full of beer. They drink, they chew, and they spit. They spit even if they don’t chew. Recall that Tiger Woods was once fined for spitting on a green in the Dubai Open. He openly apologized. 

And that’s my point.

It’s not just the local, good ol’ boys we’re talking about here. John Daley has been seen playing shirtless. Ricky Fowler, who prowls the golf tour courses in colorful Puma garb recently admitted to playing shirtless if the course allows it.

Bubba Watson and some of his fellow pro golfer buddies have done a series of videos, calling themselves the “Golf Boys”. They are available for viewing on youtube. Watson appears shirtless, wearing overalls in them.

These are highly successful professionals. Likely, all are millionaires if not multi-millionaires. Sure, they’re allowed to have some fun. But in each case, we see them for what they are. Having money simply means that when we see them smile, they have a full mouth of teeth.

Why then, do we present events like The Masters in such hushed tones with announces in suits and ties and golfers dressed like GQ models? The event itself is played at a high-brow venue you have to be a jillionaire to even join. But a game for aristocrats, it is not. 

So I propose that we lose the façade. The next time Bubba rolls one in from 40 feet to clinch a major, let us not applaud politely and present him with a crystal vase. Let us instead shake up a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon, open ‘er up and spew it everywhere. Let’s rip off our shirts and chest bump and let Jim Nance scream, “Hot damn! Did y’all see that?!”

I, for one, am tired of playing the part of a gentleman.

Drinkin' and Flyin' (and Sanity in Seattle)

I feel sorry for people that get on an airplane and fall asleep. When the engines quit running or there’s a mid-air collision, they’ll miss all the excitement.

OK, I don’t fly well. It’s the ‘height’ issue. Since I fly frequently anyway, I’ve tried various methods to overcome my phobia. I tried hypnotism a couple of times. Didn’t help. Reading on the plane? Who can concentrate when a wing is about to break off?

My wife holds my hand when we take off. I thought it was to comfort me. Turns out, she thinks it’s amusing that my hands get all sweaty.

Drinking helps.

On my first flight to Europe many years ago, a pharmacist friend gave me two Xanax tablets. He said, “Take one of these four hours before your flight. When you get to the airport, take the other with a drink of something.” For my ‘something’, I chose Jack and diet (Jack Daniels and Diet Coke). And let’s make that a double.

I woke up somewhere over Iceland.

Since then, I’ve come to understand that just a drink, maybe two, works just fine for calming my nerves. Best done before takeoff, but an in-flight toddy works, too.

Side note: people are under the impression you can’t take booze on a plane. I do it all the time. It simply has to be in plastic bottles of less than 3.4 ounces and placed the same quart-sized baggie with all your other liquids. I use ‘airline bottles’ I’ve saved. The same ones you sneak into the University of Georgia’s Sanford Stadium. (He did not just say that!) Yes, you do have to pull that baggie out of your carry-on while going through security, but I’ve never had a single objection from security. Now, where were we?

We were in the Atlanta airport recently and I ordered a Jack and diet. Make it a double.

Now, in most bars in America – including airport bars – doubling up is about $3 more. Not so at Hartsfield-Jackson. And my server had apparently seen enough rage to give me a heads-up.

“Just so you know, a drink is $9; a double is going to be $18. Didn’t want you to have sticker shock.”

Wha-what??? I was under the impression that prices at Atlanta’s airport had to be somewhat in line with street prices. What bar charges $18 for drink, even if it is a double? I canceled the drink and washed down my burrito with water.

Then I put my mad, wicked, ninja math skills to work.

A standard 750 ml bottle of Jack Daniels is roughly $25 in your local package store. 750 ml is approximately 25 ounces, or in bar-speak, 16 shots. At the price that restaurant was charging, this restaurant values that bottle of Jack at $153!

The Hartsfield-Jackson word of the day, kids, is “gouging”. Let’s say it together.

The first leg of our flight was harrowing. Nothing happened, but I did it completely sober. Sweaty palms, sweaty pits. Lots of deep breathing and prayer. A non-stop session of Angry Birds helped.

The layover was in Seattle, and I found a bar.

“How much for a Jack and diet?”

“7.50,” she said “Outstanding. I’ll take one.”

“Would you like to make it a double for $3 more?”

I can only conclude that I am willing to pay for some peace of mind, but apparently, I have my limitations.

Doggin' It (Dog People)

A neighbor was hosting happy hour recently when one of the guests showed up with her dog. It was a little yappy, high-energy thing. She called him Andre. Had a real dog been around, he could have been called Entrée.

The dog was not on a leash, immediately ran into the house, ran around all available legs, human and otherwise, hopped unto laps on the sofa, and generally, made itself at home.

“How cute”, thinks the dog’s owner.

“What the ****”, thinks anyone with any manners.

Was the dog invited? It wasn’t. Did you ask if you could bring your dog? You didn’t. In fact, had you asked, the host didn’t want the dog in the house, period. At what point in your development did you assume that because you love your dog, everyone else will, too?

I blame the world wide web.

Here’s what you’ve posted on social media in the last couple of days:

- your dog lying on the floor
- your dog lying on the couch
- your dog in the yard
- your dog in your lap
- your dog “smiling” (No, it’s not. Sorry.)

I have a friend that posts a picture of her dog every time she goes to the lake. She uses the hashtag #lakedog. And it’s always exciting stuff. “He’s tired!” (sleeping). Then here he is on a boat, a float, sleeping again, awake with tongue hanging out, standing, chewing a toy. 

Another friend and I were meeting for dinner recently. She set the time at eight o’clock because her Layla was graduating from obedience school. I was trying to argue that we should meet earlier.

“Honey, do you think she knows it’s graduation night”, I asked in my best condescending voice.

“Come on. She’s worked so hard. She deserves to graduate.”, says (former) friend.

As I am putting this article together, an acquaintance from Texas has posted a picture of his dog asleep on the bed. Did he take that photo because it’s cute? He would say, “yes”.

I will tell you the truth: the dog is lying on its back and everything it has is exposed for all the world to see. That’s really why the picture was taken. I can’t really tell, but I’m guessing his dog is a pointer.

I can’t take it! Look at that picture of your dog you just posted. Who do you think is interested, people?

Oh, it might make your mom grin, seeing what her ‘granddog’ is up to, but the rest of us are just seeing a dog lying on the floor. Get a real life! Including not referring to that dog as your granddog, grandma! 

I’ve concluded, though, that I don’t hate dogs. I hate their owners!!

I’m running out of exclamation points. And friends, I suspect. I’m OK with that. My pretend friends don’t have dogs.

Chicken is the New Cat (Chicken People)

Jerri had 14 cats. She even referred to herself as ‘crazy cat lady’. Crazy cat ladies are often referred to by another word: single.

“You’ll never find a man”, I told her repeatedly. She proved me wrong. She married him the day he was released from prison.

These days, I seem to be surrounded more and more by crazy chicken people. People I thought were normal are obsessed with chickens. They name them, they pet them, they talk to them like the chickens are their children. I do understand some of the appeal; farm-fresh eggs really do taste better.

But then all kinds of crazy breaks out. There is a website called Backyard Chickens for those people to chat with each other. My friend, Linda, met a dude named Bobby on the site. Bobby apparently knew a lot, and anytime Linda had questions, she sought Bobby’s advice. They chatted frequently.
Eventually their conversations lead her to purchase some baby chicks from Bobby. It was all neatly arranged. She would meet Bobby in the Wal-Mart parking lot (because where else do chicken people meet?). There, they would consummate the deal.

Linda was anxious and arrived early. Finally, she would meet the man who knew so much. Her go-to guy. Her fowl partner. When the appointed hour finally struck, she was giddy to see the car Bobby described pull up. And out of it popped… Bobby’s mom.

Turns out, Bobby is 15.

But the deal was real, so biddies were bought, and no cops were involved.

I helped my brother tile his laundry room floor last summer. A Polish hen named Lucy supervised. She occasionally left a comment on the job we were doing but it cleaned up pretty easily.

That same brother and his wife spend their happy hours watching “Chicken TV”. That is, they grab a beer, unfold chairs in the backyard and watch the chickens. How exciting!

Another chicken friend was raising chicks in a spare bedroom. All fine and good until the grandkids show up. It was only after the kids left that Grandma Chicken – that’s what they call her, y’all – discovered the chicks had been freed from their box and had spent several hours with the run of the room.

Feathers everywhere were the least of the problems. The birds had pooped all over the treadmill. This, however, did not ruffle Grandma Chicken’s feathers. As she put it, “somebody ought to use that thing”.

This final piece of evidence I offer to prove that chicken people are slightly off-center will require you envisioning a middle-aged woman, naked, and losing it. This is the email she sent to me:

“We had a hawk attack yesterday. I got out of the shower and looked out the window to see my beautiful chicken, Chardonnay, being attacked.”

Pause for a moment and wonder how that chicken got its name. Continuing…

“I ran through the house and yelled, screamed and waved my arms when I got outside. Scared the hawk away, feathers were everywhere. Poor Chardonnay looked petrified. I picked her up, wrapped her in a towel, took her in the house and rocked her and sang to her. After 10 minutes she started talking to me and then she wanted out of my arms. She is fine.”

The chicken may be fine, but you, my dear, are nuts.

Call Me Sometime! (Why Telemarketers Must Die)

I’m not yet a fossil, but by admitting I still have a landline phone, I am a dinosaur. When I recently complained on a social media post about the proliferation of robo- and telemarketing calls, a common response was to ask why I still owned this relic.

Some legitimate reasons to hold on to your landline: home security is connected to it, though you can do that wirelessly now. Better still, and true, a wired phone is more likely to work in a power outage.

The reason I’ve held on is I do not like to talk on the phone, and the less my cell phone rings, the happier I am. With a ‘home’ phone, I have a number to give the dentist, doctor, drug store, etc., who may have a genuine need to reach me without having to give out my cell phone number.

However, my home phone is blowing up with unwanted calls. And I’m not alone. Yes, I’m on the ‘do not call’ list. Yes, I regularly renew my membership on said list. Why yes, I’ve even filed a few complaints, just for funsies. But the hits just keep on coming and in increasing numbers.

The Federal Trade Commission is charged with regulating these matters, but it’s either gotten to be too big of a problem for them, or they simply don’t care. It’s so bad now that I get up in the morning and take the phone off the hook. Sure, I can look at caller ID and ignore those calls, but they start around 8 in the morning. If my phone is ringing at 8 a.m., somebody better be dead.

Agreed, there are legit telemarketing firms making legal phone calls. That’s not what we’re getting, folks. I’m frankly mystified that anyone would want that job, a job where 99% of the people you talk to hate you.

My new theory – and I sincerely believe this – is that the mere act of answering the phone makes it worse. By answering, you’ve just told them there is a person at this number who will pick up the phone, and I believe that information gets shared amongst the predators. Hence, the increasing volume of calls.

I recently answered a call identified on caller ID as ‘I’. Just the letter ‘I’. Thought I would ask them to please remove me from their call list. Indeed, by law they are supposed to do that, but I don’t think we’re dealing with legitimate telemarketers anymore. What I heard sounded like a very well done computer-generated voice.

“Is this Allen?”

“It is”, I replied.

*click* (call ends) 

What happened? Did it end because I didn’t say “yes” or “no”? By the way, never say the word “yes” to a telemarketer. NEVER. A tactic they use is to be recording you. Even if they ask if you love your dog, if you say “yes”, they have you saying the word “yes”. It can be used maliciously against you.

So what to do? There is the old whistle trick: have a loud whistle you can blow into the phone when the vultures come calling. But that hurts my ears, too. My favorite solution so far is from my nephew and his wife. Their two-year old son, Oliver, loves to talk on the phone. When it’s a telemarketer, they just hand the phone to him and walk away. Mom’s happy, Dad’s happy, the kid’s happy.

While that’s a brilliant strategy (for now), it would force me to find someone with a two-year old for sale. Then I would have to decide whether I would rather have a two-year old in the house or a telemarketer on the line. And the jury is unprepared to render a verdict in that case, your honor!

(Drawing provided by 7-year old Carson Terrell, dinosaur expert from Oconee County,Georgia. It is an Ichthyosaur, but you should know that.)

The Genius Wore Underwear

Asked what I do in retirement, usually my immediate answer is that I spend a lot of time in my underwear. It’s true. I’m a bit of a slob anyway, and now that I don’t have to dress for work, I spend days at a time just sitting around in my drawers.

My wife recently walked through the room where I was sitting – in my undies – and watching TV. Her catty little comment was, “you need a new uniform”. I immediately got up, went to the bedroom and changed from my tighty-whities to my tighty-blues. Hey, I got ‘em in any color you could want, lady. Red, gray, black. This is no one-trick pony you’re married to!

We probably need to pause here to discuss the fact that I wear briefs. Where did we as a society go off the rails with jockey briefs? Generally, women consider them pretty uncool. Unless they are worn by soccer star David Beckham. Then they’re hot, hot!!!

Why is he hot and I’m not? Are we not both men in our underwear?

Mostly, I wear briefs because I have seen the future. I’ve been around enough elderly men to know that women are not the only victims of gravity. My knees do not need playmates. But this is where my superior brain power kicks in. You know that pouch in the front of men’s underwear? That worthless overlap of material? Even as a little boy you discover that nothing goes through there, so what’s that for? I’ve figured it out.

It’s a cell phone pouch.

Yep. If you carry a small phone, it fits perfectly in your underwear, leaving your hands available to, say, make a sandwich. Or do a crossword puzzle. Or just stroll around the house in your underwear showing off your new cell phone pouch. Hands free, baby!

Set your phone on vibrate for those really special calls and the fun never ends.

There is a caveat. Once you share this information with your friends, you can expect them to never, never, never - not ever - borrow your phone to make a call. I have friends that won’t even shake my hand.

I think my genius intimidates them.

My Favorite Interviews

After retiring from 41 years of being on the radio, someone recently said, “I bet you met some interesting characters!” It got me thinking. Here are some of the most memorable, in no particular order.

Jennifer Taylor: Pop culture at its finest. When we interviewed her, she was in the middle of a very long run on “Two and a Half Men”, the #1 sitcom on TV, as Charlie (Sheen) Harper’s voluptuous girlfriend-turned-fiancée, Chelsea. Toward the end of our interview, she was asked about her future on the show. Certainly, she couldn’t know the real-life events that would shape Sheen’s ultimate exit from the show, but as Charlie Harper’s fiancée she was hopeful for a lot more time on the set. I wished her the best, then told her she had to go. She was a bit startled, but the conversation remained playful as I explained that most men lived somewhat vicariously through Charlie’s character, and marriage would ruin it for all of us. I doubt any interviewer had ever told her they hoped she got fired. She thought it was pretty funny.

Tom T. Hall: The country music legend known as “The Storyteller” was in Athens promoting his book called “What A Book!” in 1996. Having previously worked in country music, I knew his music well enough to be comfortable sitting down with him. As set up, the interview would be taped after I finished my morning show and would last about 5 minutes. That interview ran well over an hour! He seemed to be enjoying telling the tales, and I was sure enjoying hearing them. I had not yet been moved to Magic 102.1, and the format at WRFC (960 AM) allowed me to air most of that interview,
spread out over the course of several days. By the way, “What A Book!” was written largely during his time in Jamaica. I make no judgements, but I rather suspect a fair amount of ganja was involved. It’s a wild – and fun – read.

Marianne (Gordon) Rogers: Among my first ‘celebrity’ interviews after I arrived in Athens in 1990, she was still married to superstar Kenny Rogers when she showed up at the radio station for reasons I don’t recall. I was quite nervous asking her to sit with me for an interview, but as we talked, she regaled me with stories of meeting Kenny on the set of “Hee Haw” in the ‘70s and how the relationship blossomed. A lovely and gracious lady.

Vince Dooley: I did play-by-play for high school football all through the ‘80s. There was always excitement when the UGA football coach showed up at a game; you knew he was prospecting for players. Twice, I asked him to sit with us on the air during halftime. Neither time did he seem terribly interested, but when the microphones came on, he was kind and engaged. AND I WAS INTERVIEWING VINCE-freakin’-DOOLEY!! Many years later, he would ask me to explain the rules of soccer to him as we sat at a UGA women’s soccer match. Fun stuff.

Zell Miller: He was campaigning for governor when he landed in my hometown of Tifton. During the morning newscast, a sound bite featured the previous night’s speech of him having fun with names of a couple of nearby towns: “Elect me and I’ll never say bye-bye to Ty Ty”, is one I recall. You needn’t think I was going to let that go. I started naming all these little communities in rhyme and with my best Zell Miller country-boy accent. “I’ll never say see ya to Omega. I’ll never kill an armadilla in Ocilla (yeah, it’s mispelled, but it rhymes). I’ll never do the hula in Chula…” I must’ve rattled off 10 of ‘em. The phone rang. The voice of a local businessman I knew says, “stand by for the next governor of the state of Georgia” and he put Zell Miller on the phone. Mr. Miller thought it was great and asked if he could steal some of my rhymes as he continued stumping. Guess who I voted for.

Stefano DiMera: Yeah, that’s the character that Joseph Mascolo plays on “Days of Our Lives”, but for our time on the air together while I was in Tifton, GA, he was pretty much in character. For whatever reason, Mascolo had selected the small neighboring town of Ocilla to host a charity softball tournament. The first year, as he joined me on the air, he jokingly scolded me for not having any food or drink. The next year, I was ready. He plopped down in the control room, I popped a bottle of champagne, and we spent a couple of fun hours on the air. By the last time he came on the show, I had a cute blonde co-worker get all dolled up and serve us pastries and champagne. Lots of champagne. We got pretty drunk before it was all over. Fortunately, he had a driver, and I had a recliner in my office where I could kick back in and sleep it off.

Taylor Swift: Didn’t happen. She never returned my calls. Or emails. Or texts. Or waved as I sat outside her house… in my car…. for weeks. But I did get her autograph. 

Bought it.