Stay home, America

Many people are sticking close to home these days because of the high cost of gasoline. They can't afford to tool around just for the fun of it.

Many are foregoing cross country trips and staying closer to home.

Humorist Lewis Grizzard offered some suggestions for making the best of it while foregoing travel.

I found his suggestions in one of his bestsellers that I bought at the Piggott Community Center yard sale last month.

I think I paid $1 for the hardback.

Grizzard was a funny man. He wrote some 20 odd books and hundreds of newspaper columns during his brief lifetime. His writings have been called a "country fried" view of the world. Almost all of his bestsellers had humorous eye-catching titles too.

One was titled "Elvis is dead and I don't feel so good myself."

He wrote about divorce, politics, health, sports, neighbors, roller skates, dogs, and lots of other things.

He learned, after three divorces, that "clean underwear doesn't grow on trees."

From reading several of his books, I learned a lot about the man from Moreland, Ga.

He hated to wear socks, and usually didn't.

He had a dog named Catfish that he was extremely fond of.

He loved the Atlanta Braves. At age 23, he became the executive sports editor of the Atlanta Journal, the youngest person ever to hold the post. Later he moved on to become the sports editor at the Chicago Sun-Times. But he was a southern boy and didn't like the North, so he returned to Georgia and the Journal. He wrote a daily column for the Atlanta Constitution and his columns became syndicated. He was also a standup comedian.

In his younger years, he had a real fondness for a school girl named Kathy Sue Loudermilk, and he wrote about her often, and her endowments.

He was not a handyman. He couldn't fix anything around the house. He said he could barely operate his shower curtain.

He didn't like drawnout weather reports with color radar and other technical junk, when all he wanted to know is whether it's going to be hot or cold, wet or dry.

He said that golf is the favorite game of insurance salesmen, car thieves, and Methodist ministers. He also said he didn't know exactly what that means, "but it is certainly worth pondering."

He said he ran for mayor of Atlanta. (He didn't, of course). He said his campaign never got off the ground. He was selling bumper stickers for $17.50 each to raise money. He said he didn't sell any, not even to his mother. One of his readers told him the only thing he should run for was the city limits.

Well, anyway, you can take my word that Grizzard was a gifted writer and a humorist.

As I stated in the beginning, Grizzard had some ideas for staying home and saving gasoline..

I'll mention only two of them.

He suggested stomping ants, then counting the stomped ants,.a tedius undertaking which would consume a lot of time.

In the early 90's, Grizzard had to curtail his public appearances after a congenital heart defect began to take its toll on his health. He underwent four open heart surgeries in all, and he died in 1994, at the age of 47.

Yes, Lewis was a man after my own heart.

A man with a sense of humor wins me over every time.