Just Missed Ole Miss

Gentle Fusioneers, allow me to tell you the story of how I just missed becoming an Ole Miss Rebel.

It was February, 1991 and I was nearing completion of my residency in Nashville. Number One Son had just turned two years old, and Eyegal was very pregnant with Number Two. We barely subsisted on my meager resident’s salary, but we were young and dumb and didn’t know what it was like to have money, so we were happy. Number One has early memories of us pushing him in the stroller through Green Hills Mall, looking in the windows and not buying a single thing.… Read the rest

Jerry Mitchell, MacArthur Fellow 2009

Jerry Boo Mitchell circa 1981Pardon me, but does the goofy-looking nerd in the suspenders and top hat reading Mother Goose look like the type of guy who would strike fear in the hearts of murderous Ku Klux Klansmen?

Um, no, I don’t think so.

And if you had asked any of us who attended Harding University in the early 1980s the same question and what we thought of the future prospects of Jerry “Boo” Mitchell, first-class clown, favorite chapel announcer and author of the somewhat subversive “Fifth Column” which appeared weekly in the school newspaper The Bison, we would have likely laughed and said something like “high school speech teacher,” or “radio talk show host,” anything, really, other than the Civil Rights version of Gabriel Van Helsing.… Read the rest

R-a-z-o-r-b-a-c-k-s. Whatever.

razorback postcardIn July, 1970, my father loaded all of us into a blue, 1968 Chevy Impala sedan with newly-mounted, under-the-dash AC and headed west to Cal-ee-forn-i-a; swimming pools, movie stars, and the American Postal Workers Union Annual Convention at the Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles.

He decided that since this was a once-in-a-lifetime trip, we should hit all the highlights. On the itinerary were The Painted Desert, Grand Canyon, Disneyland, Yosemite, Sequoia, Vegas, Salt Lake City, Yellowstone, Mt. Rushmore and the St. Louis Arch. We even ventured off the beaten path and got a few kicks on Route 66 at some kitschy attractions like the Fort Courage Trading Post in Houck, Arizona.… Read the rest

He Did Jobs No One Else Wanted To Do

Dear Tim,

I don’t usually talk to dead people, but the special circumstances of your untimely death call for unusual tactics. You see, it’s very important for people to know the story I’m going to tell because I think it gives a capsule insight into who you were.

Or are. My apologies; I really don’t know what to say, because I really don’t really know what lies beyond that murky river. I guess that’s why they call it faith. I hope it’s all true, but I can’t prove it. For all I know, you could be sleeping soundly. If so, you can read this when you wake up.… Read the rest

My World Is Crimson and Houndstooth

I remember that 1973 butt-whoopin’ like it was yesterday. What I didn’t remember were all the rest that went along with it.

No, I’m not referring to the time I was playing in my mother’s sacrosanct living room and broke her prized vase. The scalding that followed burned bright and hot. She regretted that one, as I recall, checking me later in the afternoon for “marks” and apologizing profusely, probably worried that Dad would get on her for being a little too rough.

I’m talking about the 77-6 smackdown that Bear Bryant’s boys, with their high-octane wishbone offense, laid on Charlie Coffey’s hapless crew of Virginia Tech Fighting Gobblers (aka, “The Hokies”) in October of that year down in Tuscaloosa.… Read the rest

“I Really Don’t Know…

crashdavis.jpg_art_160_20080902174136It’s not exactly amoeba to man, but as you can see, there’s been a little evolution going on around here nonetheless. Behold, Ocular Fusion 3.0!

Thanks to Greg Kendall-Ball (known in Church of Christ blogging circles as the “Blogfather”) for lending me a hand and lifting me up from the primordial goo that was WordPress 2.0. The quantum leap forward to 2.8.4 feels downright bipedal. Now if I can just get my cranium to expand a few more centimeters, I should be good to go.

The new WordPress theme is “Deep Silent,” (very apropos considering how quiet I’ve been the last few months), and the “old timey” eye exam header is from The Ophthalmoscope And How To Use It (1st Ed.,… Read the rest

The Aching Beauty of Ordinary Moments

Sometimes a man just needs a little time to go climb his own mental mountaintop and mull things over without the whole world knowing about it. Hence, the “blogbattical.”

But I will return soon, and when I do, there will be some changes. You don’t hold someone’s head in your hands as they pass from this life without being changed.

Changes in cosmetics and content, but plenty of the old familiar, too. Speaking of which, if you’re my friend on Facebook or follow me on Twitter, you know I haven’t been completely silent. Those have been my low-maintenance ways of maintaining community over the past few months without the pressure of producing new content several times a week.… Read the rest

Clarkston 1, Huntsville 0

outcastsunitedEyegal and I had the privilege Sunday night of hearing author Warren St. John (Rammer Jammer Yellow Hammer–A Road Trip Into the Heart of Fan Mania) discuss his new book, Outcasts United–A Refugee Team, An American Town.

St. John’s book chronicles a season in the lives of “The Fugees,” a soccer team comprised of teenage boys from around the world who now live in the tiny southern town of Clarkston, Georgia outside Atlanta as a part of a United Nations refugee resettlement program. The central figure in the book is The Fugee’s coach, Luma Mufleh, a young Jordanian woman of privilege and Smith College graduate who, as it turns out, is something of a refugee herself (her father cut her off after she refused to return to Jordan following graduation).… Read the rest

An Ordinary Woman

mom-and-dadThis past Wednesday wasn’t the first time I’ve written Christine Brown’s eulogy in my head while rushing home to say goodbye. In 1999, my family and I drove all night from Huntsville to Roanoke, and I had everything all worked out in my mind by the time I pulled into the hospital parking garage. I even had the perfect quote from a man named G.K. Chesterton:

“The most extraordinary thing in the world is an ordinary man and an ordinary woman and their ordinary children.”

I thought that fit her to a tee.

When I got to her room, I hardly recognized her since her body was so swollen from the infection, but she was awake, the TV blaring.… Read the rest

Shoes Off, Sitting on Holy Ground

The first time I said my last words to her was just off Exit 407, I-40 East near Gatlinburg/Sevierville. Her blood pressure was plummeting, and I had told my sister to call me if it looked like she was going fast. I parked between the Russell Stover Candy Outlet and the Subway, and my sister held the phone to her ear. She was not responding by then, but they always say hearing is the last thing to go.

I told her that I loved her and that she had been a wonderful daughter, wife, mother and “Meme.” “You did a great job, Mom,” I said.… Read the rest

Covered in Ashes and Dust

When I wrote about “ashes to ashes, dust to dust” in my last post, I didn’t realize that by Lent’s end I would be covered in both.

I’m leaving in a few minutes for Virginia to be with my mother in her final days and hours on this earth. She has terminal cancer, just diagnosed (well, sort of–long story which I will get around to telling soon), and is slipping away past. My hope is that I will get there in time to talk with her and tell her that I love her and “Nice job, Mom.” I’m pretty sure she knows I feel that way, but it would still be nice to be able to say it to her before she fades to black in a morphine drip haze.… Read the rest

Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust

By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
and to dust you will return.”

–Genesis 3:19

and the dust returns to the ground it came from,
and the spirit returns to God who gave it.

Ecclesiastes 12:7

The first time I remember hearing the phrase “ashes to ashes, dust to dust” was when Princess died.

Princess was a pet cat, circa 1968-approx. 1971. I don’t remember that much about her other than she was gray, and I don’t recall having a particular fondness for her, although I’m sure I liked her well enough.… Read the rest

The Crimson Dream

I’m awake at 3:OO AM. It’s as if The Phone Call has reset my body clock to beat the roosters.

But then again, it could have been The Crimson Dream that startled me awake. I mean, when you have a dream like that, why risk going back to sleep and forgetting it? No, better to get up, get at it and write it down quickly to preserve it for posterity.

In The Crimson Dream, I was as I am now: a balding, 47-year-old male who is in pretty good shape for his peer group, but with the usual trace of middle age paunch.… Read the rest

And For That, We Are Thankful

When I finished “The Anatomy of a Broken Bone” two and a half years ago, I was hoping there would never be a Part II. “Here’s hoping our first one will also be our last,” I wrote.

So much for wishes, well-laid plans and good intentions.

Number Three Son is down again. This time with a broken distal left fibula (ankle, essentially) obtained while sledding down a snowy hillside on a trashcan lid in the wee hours of Sunday morning in Gatlinburg, Tennessee at the annual “Juiced-For-Jesus,” mega-monster youth rally, Winterfest.

The chance to frolic in a few inches of fresh, frozen precipitation was just too much of a temptation for a gang of Southern boys whose experience with the stuff is limited mainly to pictures on the internet and coverage of the Winter Olympics every four years.… Read the rest