5 Realizations From This Week

1) I love people who have bestowed importance upon themselves when they really do not matter. I recently had a bad experience with a water department (who shall not be named, for fear of raw sewage being sent to the property in question) and all it all boiled down to the uselessness/arrogance of the employees. The action requested was to simply turn on the water to a property. There were a couple of simple hoops to jump through on their end. You would have thought that I asked them to count the bricks on the Great Wall of China. Lots of drawn out sighs, slow walking (which is a common factor with self-important wastes of organic matter), and just an overall bad disposition. Next time, I'll just buy a street key and cut it on myself and see how long it takes the bureaucracy to catch on. That's what you get when you hire people who are walking to lunch at 11:59 and packing up at 4:59, ready to blast out of the gates faster than the American 4x100 team from the 1992 Olympics.

2) I miss the signs that people used to post at the store. We had a Coke machine that sat on the front and people used it to post advertisements, sales, business openings, wrestling events, etc. Most of these were hand-written. It was a canvas for some serious artwork, if you ask me. The Van Goghs and Rembrandts of Cassville would come armed with tape, magic markers, and dreams, ready to alert the world of what was going on in their lives and why the rest of us should know about it. I cannot tell you how many "Yard Sells," "Wressling Matches," and "Rockwaller Puppies" were advertised up there. I remember somebody had a Weimaraner for sale once...it was spelled "Wine Marauder" or something like that. I especially enjoyed the wrestling ads. There must have been 20 different wrestling associations in northwest Georgia, all with the name "Outlaw" or "Mountain" in the title. There was always a guest star, somebody like "Beautiful" Bobby Eaton or Paul "Mr. Wonderful" Orndorff, coming to peruse the action. Chainsaw and ladder matches were the order of the day and undoubtedly, a local man or two would be ejected for trying to get in the ring and fight a wrestler. You just can't make this stuff up.

3) It just doesn't pay to rob a Waffle House. The two idiots were were busted in Alabama last week were messing with a Southern institution. We love our mommas. We love football. We love sweet tea. And we sure as heck love our Waffle Houses. They didn't put up with Kid Rock fighting and they sure won't abide robbery. Thanks be to the Calera, Alabama police department and their quick work....as long as they weren't Auburn fans. =)

4) The University of Miami is probably going to go down, and go down hard, for the words of an incarcerated thief with an ax to grind. The old saying goes, where there's smoke, there's fire. Well, this is the Chicago Fire of 1871 and Mrs. O'Leary's heifer poured gas on every street before she kicked the latern. ESPN is predicting the "death penalty" will be revived once again, ala SMU. If you will recall, SMU was given the death penalty for the 1987-88 seasons for transgressions similar to those of Miami. Cash, cars, homes, you name it, and SMU thumbed their noses at the NCAA the entire time. They still have not fully recovered, over twenty years later. We all lose in these situations, as the NCAA will be in our business more than ever, sniffing out every violation, trying to prove a point. Good luck to Miami and I hope Nevin Shapiro gets transferred to the federal penitentiary in Dade County.

This is nothing new, however. People are just aghast over these allegations, like it's groundbreaking. Sports have always been a hotbed for scandals. The 1919 World Series. The 1950's point shaving in college basketball. The Donaghy scandal in the NBA (for those who don't know, essentially the refs conspired to call playoff games in a certain manner so a specific team would win). Steroids. Street agents. College football is no different and next season, there will be a new scapegoat. It's easy pickings for the NCAA because every school has a dirty little underworld, they just bust the most brazen offenders. With the amount of money at stake, a certain amount of corruption is inevitable. (+1 for Last Man Standing reference, an underappreciated movie if there ever was one!)

Ponder this in legal terms, if you will: These offenses are malum prohibitum, which means they are only wrong because their respective governing body says they are. It is not inherently evil to give $1,000 and a yacht ride to a kid that plays football at the school you support. What you call an infraction, they call appreciation. This concept is why all the old men who ran moonshine for years never apologized for it. It is not illegal to make and sell moonshine, it is illegal to sell it and not pay taxes. That's why these guys went to federal prison and the men who chased them were called "revenuers." The government wanted their cut of the dough. Pure and simple.

5) Speaking of sports and moonshine running, NASCAR has absolutely lost its identity. I turned on a race the other day and I had never heard of 7 of the top 10 drivers leading the race. Half of the field was from California, sponsored by a dot com and driving a foreign car. Some guy named Boris Said (I bet he's not from North Carolina) was really mad at Greg Biffle, so they argued after the race and the crews separated them. They went straight to the press and bashed each other. Sports Illustrated then concocted an article about NASCAR feuds and the criteria they must meet to become "great." I will not go into the article's criteria, as it is meaningless because of the state of NASCAR today.

NASCAR has eliminated the men and the personalities that made it fun to watch. Arguably, the greatest single event in NASCAR history was the brawl between the Allison and Yarborough at Daytona in 1979. 20 million Americans, without football and baseball spring training just getting started, watched with amazement as these two men duked out their differences on national television. No apologies. No separations. No whining to the press. Just a brawl between two men, from tiny black dots on a map, over a wreck on the track. America realized that these rough and tumble guys took their sport seriously, and maybe, it wasn't just 1,000 left turns at 200 MPH. Alcohol and tobacco sponsored everything, because the drivers and the fans drank and smoked (the horror!). Guys had nicknames like "The King," "Handsome Harry" and "Fireball." Dale Earnhardt was a rookie that season and he drove a car sponsored by Wrangler. It could not have been set up more perfectly.

Now, it's races in Vegas while the tracks in Darlington, SC and Rockingham, NC collect dust. Alcohol and tobacco have been told they are no longer welcome at the track, replaced by DuPont and godaddy.com. When a driver wins, his contract requires him to take a sip out of five different sports/soft drinks and thank 73 different sponsors. "I would like to thank the crew on our Home Depot Toyota Powerade Jergens Microsoft Chase Manhattan Camry for their excellent job today.....(sip of a Powerade, Diet Pepsi, Red Bull, Starbucks Mocha Latte, and Mayfield chocolate milk.)" Corporate has replaced character. A feud between today's drivers? LOL....a tickle pile is more like it. NASCAR lost its roots and I'm afraid they are gone forever. In the early-mid 90's, we could not keep enough NASCAR merchandise at the store to satisfy the demands. Earnhardt helmets. Elliot shirts. Jarrett car replicas. Petty figurines. They would run out the door as fast as we stocked the shelves. In 2008, my Dad could not give that stuff away. Nobody wanted it. The Southern man is turning his back on NASCAR because NASCAR turned their backs on him.