Happy New Year
OPINION —
New Years – Jan. 2016
Millions of years ago, New Year’s Eve was a rather disappointing thing. Way back then, our filthy ancestors huddled around campfires, sipping swamp water, grunting at teenagers who peed too close to camp. Then, after midnight, they’d dig a hole in the forest, and moan, “Uggh!” Which loosely translates into: “I wish someone would hurry up and invent a fiber supplement.”
And for millennia, that’s how things went.
Well, sometime after the dawn of Metamucil, New Year’s turned into a time for tequila, Jägermeister, and making grand resolutions.
One psychologist explains, “New Year’s resolutions set people up for disappointment. Each year they realize how little they’ve accomplished. In a single word: people feel like miserable failures.”
I wish someone would’ve told that quack that was two words.
Last New Year’s Eve, I sat at the bar. And before the bartender would allow me a beer, she said, “No drinks until you tell me your resolution.”
I said I didn’t have one. So she curtly swatted my knuckles with a ruler. “Don’t you want to accomplish anything, loser?”
Of course I do. But, there’s a lot of pressure on us. We’re all supposed accomplish a lot. We’re expected to keep in shape, be financially savvy, eat organic, reply to texts, trim our nails, exercise, and eat plenty of fiber.
Well, consider Jonah: a ten-year-old who lives in a cardboard box with his daddy in Mobile. When asked what Jonah wanted to accomplish this year, he said, “To find a microwave, so we can eat hot food sometimes.”
I don’t care if the bartender slaps the hell out of my knuckles, I don’t want anything this year.
Except for Jonah to get his microwave.
Southern Resolutions – Jan. 2016
Well I’ll be damned. One study found the most popular 2015 New Year’s resolution is to travel more. Which might sound like a fabulous thing, except the statistic is dead-wrong.
At least in the South it is.
Because if you measured just Southerners, you’d find only three percent want to travel more. Meaning: there’s not enough Southerners with wanderlust to form a gospel quartet.
What can we say? We like it here.
Don’t get us wrong, Southerners enjoy sightseeing like anyone else. We just don’t need to leave the South to do it, thank you very much.
We have Charleston, South Carolina. The world’s most historic city — second to Rome. Sure, Rome might have naked sculptures, but so does Charleston. And George Washington never slept in the Colosseum did he? No. But he slept in the John Ruteledge house — probably naked. They all did back then. My wife and I slept in Georgie’s exact bed.
Only, on top the covers.
Savannah’s marvelous, too. Once, we stayed at a haunted hotel, which made my wife nervous. I paid the eight-year-old boy next door five dollars to make ghost noises and beat on the walls from time to time. And that is how I broke two ribs.
Interested in exotic foods? Go to Chipley, Florida for a possum fry. Try the tail. You want beaches? Orange Beach, Alabama. Mountains? Banner Elk, North Carolina. Hiking? Virginia. Music? New Orleans. I could do this all day.
No. We’re not all world travelers. Go ahead, call us narrow minded, we’ve been called worse at the Iron Bowl. Small town Southerners aren’t like everyone else. They don’t need to wake up in Alexandroupoli, Greece to find themselves.
We’re not running from anything, and we sure as hell aren’t chasing it, either. We’re family people, churchgoers, artists, fishermen, millworkers and cooks. We don’t need passports to discover what we already have. Maybe you do.
Well.
Maybe you ought to come down here and pay us a visit.
A New Year – Jan. 2017
It’s 10:40 p.m. — New Year’s Eve. Hank Williams is on my radio. My wife is sleeping in the passenger seat. My coon hound is in the backseat.
To bring in the year, we’ve gone for a drive on county roads that weave along the Choctawhatchee Bay.
There are no cars out. The highway is vacant — except for police cruisers. I’ve never welcomed in a year like this.
As a boy, my father and I brought in holidays with shotguns. We’d march to the edge of creation and fire twelve gauges at the moon. Then, I’d sip Coca-Cola; he’d sip something clear.
Another year goes by without him.
11:02 p.m. —my tank is on E. I stop at a gas station. The pump card-reader is broken. My wife is still out cold.
I go inside to pay. The clerk is a young girl with purple hair. She wanted to be with her kids tonight, but someone called in with a sinus infection.
I buy a Coca-Cola in a plastic bottle.
I also buy a scratch-off lotto ticket. The last few minutes of the year, I’m feeling lucky. I use my keys to scratch the ticket. I win five bucks. So, I buy another two. I win another dollar.
“Lucky you,” the cashier says. “Wish I could buy one, but it’s against store policy.”
To hell with policy. It’s New Year’s Eve.
I buy her one.
She swipes a coin from the take-a-penny tray. She scratches. She wins ten bucks. We high-five.
It’s only ten bucks, but seeing her win makes my year.
11:28 p.m. —I’m driving. My wife is still sawing pine logs. I’m riding though the North Florida woods, sipping Coke. Trees grow so high you can’t see the moon. It’s almost like poetry.
Long ago, my college professor told us to choose a poem to recite in class. Students chose lofty selections from the greats. Whitman, Dickinson, Frost.
I consulted Daddy’s Hank Williams songbook. He’d given it to me before he died. He’d wanted to be a guitar player once upon a time, but he was god-awful. He gave the instrument to me.
I recited, “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” and made a D.
I wasn’t doing it for the teacher.
11:40 p.m. —my Coke is almost empty. I’m parked on the edge of the bay to watch fireworks. My coon hound is looking at me with red eyes. And I’m writing you, just like I do every day.
Listen, I don’t remember how I started writing, or why. I have nothing valuable to say, I don’t know any big words, and I’m as plain as they come. But I won’t lie to you, it has been precious to me. And so have you.
These are my last words of the old year, my first words of the new:
I love you.
Happy New Year.
