Welcome to my World: Greasing the Train Tracks for Y'all

Welcome, Willkommen, and Bienvenidos! See, I am multicultural like that. This is an open door blog and all walks of life may tread in peace here. I created this blog after several requests from friends and family, plus it is a kickass way to vent about stuff that I care about/want to make fun of. Sarcasm is my native language and I speak it fluently, so read with a grain of salt....actually with a whole boulder of salt. I do not hide how I feel because there is no point going through life in America without standing on your own two feet. This is my blog and I control all that I survey. There may be things you don't agree with, that's fine. There may be holes in my blogosphere, but it's not from pollution, so tell Al Gore to stick to his own inconvenient truths. What I can guarantee is that I will do my best to make you laugh, cry, reminisce, and ponder things in a different light.

I'm a northwest Georgian, born in Cartersville but raised in Cassville, an unincorporated area 4 miles north. Many of my ideals and stories come from here. Cassville has changed over the years, it is not quite as small and the novelty of living there has worn off with the influx of subdivisions and strip malls that decorate the landscape now. The Cassville I remember had no stop light. The Cassville I remember had dirt roads. The Cassville I remember taught me to appreciate the silence of an early morning cup of coffee as the sun cooked the dew off the grass. I'm not saying this way of life is extinct, but it's like the dinosaurs right before the big meteor hit the Earth, it is on borrowed time. I have done my best to retain all that I could from those years of my life and perpetuate them in all that I do and say.

My Dad owned a general store, Cass Grocery, for 26 years. Of those 26, I worked there for 14. We were a full service gas station (one of the last in the county), grocery, hardware and feed supply store. We prided ourselves on service and treating every customer like they were special (you can define "special" however you want). I got to know hundreds of people, their families, and everything that I needed or did not need to know about them. We had wooden benches in front of the store and every morning, the men of Cassville would congregate with a cup of coffee and a biscuit and talk about everything from politics to property tax. It was like C-Span, except everybody wore Carhartts, camouflage, and smoked Marlboros. They probably didn't lie as much either. Everybody I grew up with says I have two educations, one in the schools and one from the store. I don't have a degree on the wall from Cass Grocery, but I sure as hell use it way more than calculus.

Let's see, I'm a sports fanatic. When you grow up in the middle of nowhere, there really isn't much else to do. My brother and I played any and all sports, except swimming (our pond had water moccasins, any Southerner knows to stay the hell away from them). In fact, we sold our four-wheeler to pour a half court in a pasture behind my house, complete with outdoor lighting. What self respecting ruralite sells his four-wheeler for a basketball court? This guy. I have a photographic memory, so sports statistics, movie quotes and top ten lists are like crack to me. I love to people watch, New York City (weird, right?)(instead of saving money for student loan payments, I use it to go to NYC three times a year and blow it out), a good steak, cocktails, Georgia football, live oaks with Spanish moss, Crossfit, and pretty much all music except for pop country and most rock since 2001. I hate unoriginal people, flavored coffee, Nextel phones, comedy movie sequels, red ink pens, public bathrooms and small appetizers. Most of what I write will touch on these subjects, complete with random Youtube videos.

So, thank y'all for reading and I hope you enjoy. Oh yeah, and I'm writing a book. This is a shameless plug, sorry. It's been two years in the making, but I am getting her ready for any and all who are willing to publish this bad boy.