TERRY LEWIS: Are fractures forming in ‘The Table’ of friends?

It’s simply called “The Table.”

For at least the past five years, a group of friends, confidants, attorneys, physicians, want-to-be newspaper people, and assorted passersby who just pull up a chair have gathered weekly at a local watering hole to discuss sports, politics, women and various sundry topics.

Over that period of time, I have learned much during those mostly enjoyable, if sometimes fractious, sessions.

I’ve seen our little table grow from three regulars to now sometimes having as many as seven gathered (avoid the corner seats, boys), engaged in a flow of conversation where getting a point into the mix is like merging onto I-75 south in Atlanta at 5:30 on Friday afternoon.

You have to pick your spots — and jump quickly. Those “I have the conch” moments are measured in milliseconds.

The Table is really just one of the many microcosms that make up Albany, and I’m sure many other tables also exist — from breakfast groups to guys in barbershops to friends sitting on milk crates in backyards. They’re all discussing the same issues.

Most of our conversations center on football because three members are Georgia fans, one is an Indiana fan, Auburn fans show up occasionally, and then there’s me — a rock-ribbed fan of the Crimson Tide.

For six months of the year, we argue about football and try to glean information about position changes and recruiting insight from knowledgeable people. But during the “dead period,” from April until August, the talk tends to drift toward politics. Which most know is an excellent way to get the hair up on an individual.

There have been times over the past several months in which a proposed 60-bed hospital has frayed nerves and strained friendships on both sides of the Kinchafoonee Creek and has also caused some cracks to appear in our collegial table sessions. Mix that in with a May 22 primary, and things can get wobbly.

The one rule we follow during the Wednesday summit is “What happens at The Table stays at The Table.” However, sometimes that line gets a little blurry.

Now it’s to the point where I have been dog-cussed over the phone by a regular at the table, and things were said that make me think the relationship I had with that individual will never be the same.

But like Carlton Fletcher and I say, because we worked in sports together, if you can take a cussing out from the late Tift County football Coach Gene Brodie or Colquitt County’s Jim Hughes and keep on ticking, anything else is just a walk in the park.

On Tuesday, a judge in Fulton Superior Court will render a decision on Dougherty County’s petition for a temporary restraining order on further work at the LCMC site, located on the former Grand Island Golf Course. If the petition is denied, it will leave Dougherty County with the lone option of a second petition (also filed in Fulton County,) for declaratory judgment and for a writ of mandamus against the Georgia Department of Community Health.

The DCH is the body that approved the LCMC’s certificate of need, allowing the project to move forward.

I always get nervous in a room full of lawyers, and there are more hanging around this issue than I’d like. But my fervent hope is that the issue doesn’t mess up our weekly Table sessions. Yet if Coach Brodie were still around, I might get him to make a phone call for me.

Contact Terry Lewis at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @ABH_Lewis.