CARLTON FLETCHER: Great — and maybe not so great — expectations

And I’ve changed, I’ve changed, I’ve reconsidered everything.

— Josh Joplin Group

While gleefully going back in time to rediscover an old journalistic hero recently, I accidentally uncovered an uncomfortable truth. It’s one that will aggravate – even anger – readers of a certain age.

But I feel compelled to discuss it.

On a whim – with an assist from Tara – I started re-reading some of the books by one of my favorite all-time journalist/author heroes, late Atlanta Journal/syndicated columnist Lewis Grizzard. Just gazing upon some of his literary works – especially the collections of his most memorable columns – left me giddy, almost as much as when I spent the last couple of months re-reading my collection of classic literature by the great (maybe greatest?) Georgia author, Pat Conroy.

Just reading the book titles left an ear-to-ear grin on my face: “Don’t Sit Under the Grits Tree With Anyone Else BUt Me,” “Kathy Sue Loudermilk, I Love You,” “Elvis Is Dead and I Don’t Feel So Good Myself,” “If Love Were Oil, I’d Be About a Quart Low,” “They Tore Out My Heart and Stomped That Sucker Flat,” “When My Love Returns from the Ladies’ Room, Will I Be Too Old to Care?,” “Don’t Bend Over in the Garden, Granny, You Know Them Taters Got Eyes” …

During his heyday, mostly in the ‘80s and ‘90s, Grizzard was one of, if not the, most celebrated columnists in America. He has often been imitated – generally very poorly – by pretty much any newspaper columnist in the South, and there are still individuals who purport to be columnists who try – again, very poorly – to imitate his style. But all come up way short.

Grizzard had more going for him than his quick wit and his eagle’s eye for a story that he could turn into one of his columns that could one day make readers laugh out loud, the next have them raging mad at some inequity, or even bring a tear to their eye as he’d discovered the key that unlocked readers’ emotions.

And thoughts of Grizzard’s hilariously famous characters – Weyman C. Wannamaker Jr. (a great American), Cordie Mae Poovey, the aforementioned Ms. Loudermilk, “Hog” Phillpot, Claude “Goat” Rainwater, Curtis “Fruit Jar” Hainey, et al – bring an immediate smile to a faithful reader’s face. (This is where many of Grizzard’s would-be imitators fall way short: They try to match his wit by coming up with their own recurring characters who typically are very much derivative and invariably, well, dumb.)

So, without delay, I dived into a newly rediscovered collection of Grizzard’s books. But a funny thing happened as I eagerly – at least at first – made my way from column to column. I discovered, to my own dismay, that this great writer whose columns made me want to do what he did, did not really hold up the way I expected them to.

Now don’t get me wrong: I am not saying that the years have done anything to diminish Grizzard’s writing style. His turn of phrases and usage – make that correct usage – of Southern slang and cultural references are still so spot on, any of his would-be imitators should be ashamed for even trying to capture his inimitable style.

(Personal aside here: When I was a young and impressionable lad walking the not-so-mean streets of Ocilla, Ga., I found ways – in libraries, in the Ocilla Rex-All Drug Store, and occasionally, when I had a little spare change, in a newspaper rack – to get ahold of Grizzard’s columns. I read them religiously. Fate intervened, and I was given the opportunity (thank you, Bill Bradford, one of my journalism heroes) to start what’s turned into a somewhat checkered but long-term career in this industry that I love, and, yes, I was one of those unskilled columnists who thought he was Ocilla’s answer to Lewis Grizzard. I don’t have any of those columns I wrote for The Ocilla Star – hopefully they’ve all been burned or buried in some deep, dark hole – but I’ll admit now I had to grow out of my penchant for, as Bradford told me once, “aping (again, poorly) Grizzard.”)

Getting back to the point I was making, while many of Grizzard’s columns in his book series are indeed reminders of why he was so great, the problem I encountered reading them some 40-plus years later is that the topics were largely unrelatable in the 2020s South.

Now I know people around here who were not only huge fans of Grizzard’s, their University of Georgia ties made them close friends. To those folks, I apologize. I guess maybe there is something about the idea of setting oneself up for disappointment by setting expectations too high. I think even Goat Rainwater would agree.

Email Carlton Fletcher at [email protected].