Goodbye, my friend

A long time ago – I don’t remember the exact year, but I think it was 1983 – I was attending Gordon Junior College, a little school in Barnesville, Ga., and I had one of those chance encounters that changed me.

I was standing outside the small student center there, and I noticed this odd-looking little guy standing next to me. He was several inches shorter than me, and he was wearing a dark coat and carrying what I thought at first was a briefcase, but turned out to be a trumpet case. What a nerd, I thought.

But we began to talk, and after a few minutes, we discovered that we had something in common - music. We were both big Beatles fans, and there were several other groups that we both liked, and before long we were discussing how cool it would be form our own band.

That’s how I came to know Vic Chesnutt, who died on Christmas Day in an Athens hospital, only 45 years old, his body and his spirit apparently broken, 20 years after the world discovered the wonder of his music.

We never really got a band going back then, in part because I had no discernible musical ability. But Vic did. He could play guitar and keyboards and trumpets and he was already writing his own songs. Many afternoons I would go over to his house near Zebulon, along with our friend Todd McBride, and listen to music and try to play some and sing and make each other laugh. I don’t think I was ever around him for more than 10 minutes without laughing, and vice versa.

The laughter was interrupted one night when Vic lost control of his station wagon and crashed into a ditch, a wreck that left him partially paralyzed and in a wheelchair for the remainder of his life. A few of us went to see him shortly after the wreck at the Shephard Spinal Center in Atlanta, and it was a very difficult thing to deal with. But even that day, he made me laugh. We were on an elevator with a group of nurses and doctors and he put an unlit cigarette in his mouth and said, “Mmmm, good doobie. Good doobie.”

Though he was never able to fully regain the use and agility in his right hand, he figured out a way to play guitar, and was soon making music again. Several of my friends and I found ourselves in Athens, eventually, some going to college, some playing in a band. Vic and Todd and some others formed a band, and for a few short months, I actually joined them as their drummer. Those were some of the best times of my life.

I can recall many times, sitting around at somebody’s house in Athens, hearing Vic play his newest song. I was always amazed. His songs were quirky, funny, heartfelt, personal, and unlike anything else I’d heard. You don’t really see his music compared to many others, because he was that rarest of breed, an original.

I graduated from UGA, moved away, started raising a family, so my trips back to Athens and my chances to see and talk to Vic became rarer and rarer. He gave me a guitar, a cheap Yamaha acoustic that he had adorned with plastic stickers. He encouraged me to learn how to play, and to write songs, and I did, though none of them are as good as his. I still have that old guitar, even though it’s long past being playable, and it is one of my most treasured possessions. I’m glad he never asked for it back.

Vic got his big break not long after I left Athens. Michael Stipe, always a big fan of Vic’s, produced his first two albums, and they were a sensation – Little, and West of Rome. Music critics loved him, as did other musicians. Vic never made it big commercially, but he had a devoted following all across the country and in Europe. He was friends with Lucinda Williams and recorded with Emmylou Harris and was in “Slingblade” with his friend Billy Bob Thornton. He was, in my eyes at least, a huge star.

As too often happens with old friends, we grow apart, we lose touch, we go years without seeing each other or talking to each other. The last time I saw him was several years ago, in an Atlanta club, where was playing a show to promote his CD Silver Lake. I only got to speak to him a few minutes after the show, but when he saw me his eyes lit up and he started pointing at me, and for that few minutes we were the same as we were in 1983, laughing at each other’s dumb jokes and enjoying each other’s company.

For many, many years, I would have regularly have dreams in which Vic would appear, and in all of them, he was not in a wheelchair, but he was walking and running. I guess that’s the way my mind wanted to remember him. Today, and for the past couple of days, he’s been not in my dreams, but in my waking mind, and I don’t picture him running or walking, but I picture him laughing, and pointing at me, and picking up his guitar to blow me away again. That’s how he will always live in my mind. Rest in peace, my friend.

It's almost here

Here it is, three days before Christmas, and I’ve already finished my shopping. It’s kind of a letdown. I don’t know what to do with myself now. I’m a guy who’s been known to bang on the doors of a K-mart store that just closed on Christmas Eve like Dustin Hoffman at the end of “The Graduate.”

I guess it helped that we’ve sort of eliminated the element of surprise when it comes to gift-giving in my family. I bought gifts for my wife and both children while they were in the store with me. They actually all tried their gifts on before I bought them. Then we came home and wrapped them and put them under the tree, for some reason.

And I know what I’m getting from the kids, too. Allie is giving me a new putter, which I practiced with in the sporting goods store before she “bought” it. I’m pretty sure she used my debit card to pay for it. David went out shopping for me and I got a text that read “What size belt do you wear?” I took that as a pretty good clue.

I don’t mind knowing that the gifts are. It’s better than getting something you don’t want. My dad probably still has unopened boxes of Aqua-Velva and soap-on-a-rope lying around his house somewhere.

I still had to go in a few stores this Christmas season, but I pretty much avoided the mall, except for a couple of brief excursions. I learned long ago that the trick, if you’re married, is to make every trip to the mall so unpleasant and excruciating for your wife that she’ll never ask you to go again. They should write this into the wedding vows – “Do you promise to love, honor, obey, and never try to drag your husband to a shopping mall?”

The people who work in retail stores must go insane in December. Not only from the big crowds and frantic shoppers, but from the incessant Christmas music that every store feels it must play 24 hours a day. I was in one store and “Frosty the Snowman” was playing the whole time, in Spanish. It’s irritating enough in English. Those poor women had to be homicidal by the time they went home from work.

I really don’t care what I get for Christmas. I never could name anything specific when I was asked what I wanted. Though I really could use some nice new pajama pants. Maybe it’s not too late, depending on who’s reading this.

The spirit of Christmas

People had begun to look at me funny recently when I told them we didn’t have a Christmas tree up yet, so the family and I trundled off together to a tree farm Friday to continue our family tradition of cutting one down.

We argue every year about whose turn it is to pick out the tree. We decided long ago we would rotate, but we basically haven’t known whose turn it was since 1999. I don’t believe I ever actually picked out the tree. This year, my daughter claimed to have written documentation that it was her year, but I’m not convinced it wasn’t a forgery.

Anyway, we got to the farm about 10 minutes before dark, and it was extremity-numbing cold, so we picked out the tree in record time this year. One of the good parts about the kids getting older is my son is now old enough to saw down the tree. It gave me a warm fuzzy feeling handing him that saw, let me tell you. Not because it made me proud to see him becoming a man, but because my back was killing me.

As usual, we cut down a tree that scrapes the ceiling in our living room. Every year, we look at our tree and say, “Wow, that was too big, we need to get a smaller one next year.” And every year, we don’t. We’re like alcoholics waking up on Sunday mornings with a hangover, swearing we’ll never drink again.

The fun begins with these trees when I have to get them into the Christmas tree stand. There are some inventions that have not advanced technologically in hundreds of years – toilets, toothpicks, slingshots, and Christmas tree stands are among them. King Charlemagne probably used a Christmas tree stand exactly like the one I bought at Walgreens last year.

My son offered to help me get this year’s cypress beast into the stand. By help, he meant stand there with one hand on the tree while text-messaging a girl with the other. I’m lying on the floor, twisting a rusty screw into a gnarled tree trunk, and he’s tapping out “I wnt 2 C U 2” to some girl on his phone.

I did not realize we had cut down a tree that would defy the laws of physics. But every time I’d get it straight up and down in the tree stand, I would step back and it would start to lean and wobble like Otis Campbell on a Saturday night. At one point I was lying on the floor, the tree on top of me, the pungent odor of branches in my nose and the tap-tap-tap of cell-phone Romeo in my ears. I perhaps uttered a mild curse word or two and asked the boy to either help me, or have a Marvin Gaye experience with his father. He saw the light.

After a couple more false starts, and me slapping the phone out of his hand, we got it to stand up, albeit at a 45-degree angle. Well, that’s nothing that a few magazines can’t fix, so we wrestled it into a corner of the living and held our breath. When after 30 seconds it didn’t fall, we both exhaled and figured our job was done.

My wife and daughter got home, and it didn’t take Nostradamus to predict what they were going to say – “It’s not straight.” Well, I told them, it as straight as it’s going to get. Christmas is not about everything looking perfect, anyway. It’s about the birth of Jesus and giving presents and being with family and friends and watching Christmas shows on TV while the room is bathed in the light of a crooked, too-big tree filled with home-made ornaments and a strand of lights where only half the bulbs work. That’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.

Falcons' "fans" are embarrassment

I have been a Falcons’ fan for as long as I can remember, and believe me, it can be pretty tough.

I was a Falcons’ fan when they lost 59-0 to the Los Angeles Rams. I was a Falcons’ fan when we had to suffer through terrible coaches like Dan Henning and Marion Campbell and June Jones. I endured the embarrassment of the team being led by the likes of Jerry Glanville and Jim Mora Jr., and I have been able to still support them despite the presence of idiots like Andre Rison and Deangelo Hall and Jeff George.

But yesterday in the Georgia Dome, I believe I witnessed a new low in Atlanta Falcons' history – specifically, in Falcons’ fans’ history. I walked out of that place shaking my head, embarrassed and disgusted and believing that the city of Atlanta does not deserve a pro football franchise.

It wasn’t so much that they lost to the Philadelphia Eagles. Five of the team’s offensive starters were injured and missed the game, so it wasn’t surprising that they would lose. But there is no excuse for the behavior of many of the team’s so-called “fans.”

Sunday marked the return of the disgraced Michael Vick to the Dome. The lazy ignorant dog-killer quarterback is back in the league with the Eagles after taking $100 million and almost single-handedly destroying the Atlanta franchise. He’s with the Eagles now, and I don’t begrudge him getting a chance to play. He did his time, so he should be allowed to come back.

As I looked around and saw all of those morons wearing Vick jerseys in the crowd, my faith in humanity was challenged. I don’t understand grown men and women wearing football jerseys anyway, but that’s another story. But here’s what those people were saying – we’re not Falcons’ fans, we’re Michael Vick fans.

And don’t let anybody fool you. It was not a mild reaction to Vick. There were thousands of people cheering for him in that stadium. They cheered when he scored a touchdown. That’s right, people wearing Falcons' jerseys, in the Falcons’ stadium, were excited when a player from another team scored a touchdown to help beat Atlanta. In the fourth quarter, they chanted “We want Vick!”, and celebrated like he was a conquering hero when he trotted on to the field. And when he threw a touchdown pass, you would have thought the Falcons had just won the Super Bowl, the way it sounded in there.

Make no mistake; there is a definite racial element to all of this. Almost all of the Vick supporters were black. Can someone please tell me what they see in him? Do they like him simply because he is also black? Because I can see no other reason that they would go so crazy for him.

Here’s the thing, people. When he was here, he didn’t care about you at all. He didn’t stay in Atlanta in the offseason and work in the community. He high-tailed it back to Virginia as soon as he could to hang with his homeboys and watch over his fighting dogs. He flipped the fans off, he embarrassed the franchise with some of his public actions, and by his own admission he didn’t bother looking at film, learning the offense, or working hard at helping the team win. He wasn’t even that good of a quarterback. Every now and then he would break off an exciting run, but he never progressed as a passer, and his last two seasons with the team, they didn’t even make the playoffs. This is your hero?

And even if you thought he was a great player, which he wasn’t, did his absolute lack of character not bother you at all? Do you really want your sons to emulate him and see him as a role model?

Thank goodness the Falcons actually have a real quarterback now, one who comes early and stays late, who is conscientious and works hard and does the right thing. I will gladly continue to cheer for Matt Ryan, but I will do it from the comfort of my living room. I don’t want to be surrounded by those people again.