NEEDING LEWIS GRIZZARD

Not a consultant. Not another financial report. Not another City Council meeting.

Lewis Grizzard

There comes a point when a person who cares deeply about her city has read enough, worried enough, written enough, shaken her head enough, and said, “Surely they aren’t going to do that,” enough times that another approach becomes necessary.

I needed Lewis Grizzard and a dose of his humor. Two of his book titles have stayed tucked away in my head for years.

Elvis Is Dead and I ‘m Not Feeling So Good Myself.    Shoot Low, Boys, They’re Ridin’ Shetland Ponies.

Now, really. How can you not feel better after a good laugh?

I honestly don’t know what I would do if I couldn’t read.

There are plenty of things I can’t remember. I can stand there trying to remember the name of a restaurant I have been to twenty times and come up empty handed. I sometimes play a game with myself, trying to name the Secretaries of State in order, and inevitably there will be one poor soul stranded somewhere along the way whom I cannot think of for the life of me.

But give me a book. Give me the opening line of a novel I have loved, a piece of poetry, a paragraph of history, an old song whose words come back, or the life of someone I suddenly decide I need to know more about, and the engine starts again.

These things are the gas I run on.

One book leads to another. One name sends me looking for another name, a sentence brings a tear. I am happy when reading and curiosity bring me company like Lewis Grizzard.

Grizzard was a Georgia newspaperman before he became the enormously popular Southern humorist many of us remember. Remarkably, he became executive sports editor of the Atlanta Journal at only 23. Eventually he found the kind of writing that made him famous, writing about life as he saw it, and putting himself right in the middle of the story.

At the height of his popularity, his newspaper column appeared across the country. He wrote about the South, football, marriage, divorce, his parents, his health, the changing world around him, and the everyday absurdities of being alive..

This was a man who went through serious heart surgery and came out of the experience with a book called They Tore Out My Heart and Stomped That Sucker Flat.

There is something to be learned from a man who could do that.

Grizzard could be sharp, and certainly not everything he wrote belongs comfortably in our own time. I don’t need all of Lewis Grizzard to appreciate the part I came looking for.

He understood bewilderment.

He understood that sometimes the world simply does not behave as a reasonable person believes it ought to behave.

And sometimes, after taking it seriously, studying it, arguing about it, worrying about it, and trying your best to change it, there comes a moment when you simply have to laugh.

I have been carrying a lot of Rocky Mount around with me lately. Humor is called for.

City Council, finances, leadership, elections, downtown, preservation, old houses that need saving, decisions I cannot understand, and decisions I understand perfectly well and wish I didn’t.

None of these things has suddenly become unimportant. I haven’t changed my mind about any of them.

But perhaps those of us who care about this city are allowed, every once in a while, to put down the sword and pick up Lewis Grizzard.

Because there are days when following the affairs of Rocky Mount requires either a sense of humor or considerably stronger medication than I would ever agree to take.

I choose humor, or maybe a song. Do you remember The Sunny Side of the Street?                                                                                                                             Grab your coat and get your hat, leave your worries on the doorstep, just direct your feet to the sunny side of the street.

If I could add a soundtrack to Mainstreetrockymount.com, this song would be my choice.

I come to Main Street believing in possibilities. Not because I don’t see the problems. Good heavens, anyone who reads this blog knows better than that.

I have been given marvelous glasses through which I look at Rocky Mount. I have polished these lenses over a lifetime by reading books, remembering poetry, singing old songs, loving history, studying houses and architecture, becoming an unapologetic political junkie, and remaining endlessly interested in people and the things they do.

It has made life richer and infinitely more interesting. Lewis Grizzard’s humor is folded into my life.

Main Street, and writing the blog, is where all these things come together and inform how I look at Rocky Mount.

Some days the lens is preservation. Some days it is politics. Some days it is history. And thank goodness, some days it is Lewis Grizzard.

I can laugh about Rocky Mount because I haven’t given up on it. You don’t shake your head over a place you no longer care about. You don’t worry over its houses, its downtown, its leadership, its money, its possibilities, and its future if you have already packed up emotionally and left.

I am still here.

Still reading.

Still watching.

Still writing.

Still believing.

And still looking, whenever I can, for the sunny side of the street.

But every now and then, I reserve the right to call Lewis Grizzard for reinforcement.

Elvis is dead.

I’m not feeling so good myself.

And if anybody comes riding down Main Street on a Shetland pony, for heaven’s sake, shoot low.