Grizzard’s legacy lives in good ol’ hearts across country

Real Bubbas, semi-Bubbas, closet Bubbas and even female Bubbas lost a good friend, maybe even their champion, when Southern humorist Lewis Grizzard died 15 years ago this month at the age of 47.

“I’m not a modern man,” Lewis had said in a television interview, a fact that did not need to be stated to readers of his columns and books who recognized him as an un-Reconstructed Southerner and proud of it.

He wrote of growing up in Moreland in a day when his mother just had to say “Be sweet” to departing children and everything was understood. No warnings about not talking to strangers, keeping your head down and your powder dry, or protecting yourself from addictions and social diseases.

Some may have disagreed with his views, but still they read him with fondness as he re-created and preserved the days when they, too, were growing up in Southern towns like Moreland.

He recalled dancing cheek to cheek in the National Guard Armory and wrote that “virginity was guarded like the Twinkie room at Graceland,” and you had to go steady and give up your letter jacket just to get a kiss on the mouth.

His friend, former Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young, had called Lewis a “smart-ass white boy,” which Lewis loved so much that he started using it as his introduction at speaking engagements.

But he really needed no introduction when speaking to his fans, who felt they knew him well from his writing. They knew he was the consummate good ol’ boy who loved above all his Mama, Miss Christine, and Catfish, the black lab, a gift from the coach of the Georgia Bulldogs, another of Lewis’ great loves. They knew he liked white bread and fried chicken, barbecue and homegrown tomatoes, the Atlanta Braves, Rush Limbaugh, golf, Moon Pies, a good party and Coca-Cola.

He was on record as saying that “Co-Cola” was just about the perfect concoction, one that could only be improved by the addition of a little bourbon or rum.

After his third divorce, Lewis said he didn’t plan to marry again, he’d just look for a woman he could grow to hate and buy her a house.

He peppered his columns and books with Southern colloquialisms such as “nekkid”, explaining that while naked means you aren’t wearing clothes, nekkid means you aren’t wearing clothes and you’re up to something.

After his near death experience in 1993, he wrote a column expressing his gratitude to the many people who had prayed for him. But in 1994 we learned that sometimes the answer to prayer is “no,” and after a decade of heart problems, Lewis had simply run out of miracles.

The Speaker of the Georgia House had a heart attack on the same day Lewis lay near death at Emory University Hospital, but Lewis got the AJC headline in the boldest of black letters. He wrote fondly of his Land of Cotton and ensured that the old times were not forgotten. Good ol’ people everywhere still miss that.

• Sandra Fay, an Atlanta native, is a humorist living in Plano, Texas.