Newspaper Page Text
gfre Aiiuancg
The ADVANCE, July 14, 2021/Page 5A
OPINIONS
“I honor the man who is willing to sink
Half his repute for the freedom to think,
And when he has thought, be his cause strong or weak,
Will risk t’other half for the freedom to speak.”
—James Russell Lowell
editorials
The Legend of Cowman
Cowman was
born from the depths
of my imagination. I
made him up one af
ternoon a few weeks
ago, as I tried to con
coct a weird or some
what scary story to
share with our grand-niece and grand-neph
ews at last weekends family reunion.
“I don’t want to terrify them,” I said to
my husband. “I want the story to be memo
rable without preventing them from sleeping
that night. I might need your help to make it
believable.”
My husband nodded in understanding.
We’re a team.
So, last weekend, our family members
gathered at Jack Hill State Park to reconnect
after a long pandemic year. We rented a cot
tage so we could all stay out there together
and maximize our bonding time.
“When you guys have on your pajamas
and are ready for bed, I have a scary story to
share,” I said to Lydda (8), Andrew (7), and
Lawson (6) on Saturday night.
In record time, they jumped into their
PJs and tucked themselves deeply into the
covers of their beds. I winked at my husband,
walked into the kids’ room, sat on the edge of
the bed next to a window, cleared my throat,
and took on a very serious tone.
This is the legend of Cowman. Once upon a
time, a long, long time ago, an old farmer lived
on a dirt road not far from here, and he tended
Vidalia onions and 20 head of cattle.
The old man loved his cows so much. He
had named each one of them as if they were his
pets. He talked to them every day and petted
them and took great care of his cows. Then one
day, a neighbor man came over and suggested
that the old man butcher a few of his cows and
give everyone in the community free steaks and
hamburgers, but the old man didn’t want to do
that.
“I just can’t do it," the old man said. “I’ve
promised my cows they can live out their days in
my green, grassy pasture. ”
The neighbor got angry and left.
The next morning, the old man heard a
horrible noise and ran out of his house toward
the pasture. The neighbor was in the field with
a bloody butcher knife. He had killed one of the
old farmer's favorite cows. The old man ran up
to the neighbor and hit him over and over again
with his fists. The neighbor fought back, and
suddenly, the old man fell to the ground. He was
dead — dead as a doornail.
The neighbor ran away and hid, but guilt
got the best of him. He told his wife what had
happened. His wife, who attended church every
Sunday, convinced her husband to do the right
thing.
“If he is really dead, we will call the police
and confess," she said to her husband.
The next morning, as the sun was rising,
the neighbor and his wife walked to the old
man’s field. They found a puddle of blood, but
the old man and the cow were gone. They had
vanished without a trace.
Legend has it that at midnight that night,
the cow and the old man became ‘one.’ Under
the Georgia moonlight, Cowman was born —
the body of a man and the head of a cow. Cow
man aimlessly wanders the woods, pastures,
and parks of South Georgia making a horrible,
crazy mooing sound. In fact, I heard that Cow
man was spotted not too far away from here just
yesterday.
At this point in my story, something
(someone) just outside our window started
making a loud, God-awful noise — part
mooing, part the distress call of an animal
being murdered, part cat cry, part werewolf
howl.
I looked at the middle child, Andrew,
who was curled up next to me. His eyes were
as large as saucers and his mouth was wide
open. He grabbed the comforter and pulled
it over his head for safety.
“What in the world was that?” I asked.
“Cowman? Do you think that it’s Cow
man?” Lawson whispered in his tiny voice.
He and Lydda were sitting straight up in their
bed and pressed up against our niece, Ansley,
who was trying not to laugh.
Then we heard the crazy moo-ish howl
again, much louder this time.
“I think it might be crazy Cowman, but
don’t worry, we’re safe in here,” I said.
You could have heard a pin drop as the
kids strained to hear the call again.
“Well, time to go to sleep,” I said, getting
up suddenly and walking to the door. “Good
night! Love you guys!”
Needless to say, the kids didn’t go to
sleep for a while, and the next morning,
Cowman was still the topic of conversation.
Now some of you will read this and think
we were cruel to tease the kids like we did,
but surviving the night after listening to a
scary story is somewhat of a childhood rite
of passage. It’s good, clean fun. It’s bonafide
bonding time.
I’ve heard through the grapevine that the
kids are still talking about Cowman nearly a
week later. Cowman, a figment of my imagi
nation (and the kids’ imaginations, too) is
part of history now, alongside Bigfoot, the
Loch Ness Monster, and Mothman. May the
legend of Cowman live on forever, and if you
ever see a creature with a man’s body and a
cow’s head, please contact me immediately.
From the Porch
By Amber Nagle
It '.s' Just Water
By Joe Phillips
Dear Me
It is confession
time.
I’ve been writing
to you about Little
Miss Phillips for close
to thirty years, leaving
you to deduce that
something has to be
amiss.
LMP isn’t little any more, but the stories
are all mostly true, just not contemporary.
She did boss me around when the Kan
sas Woman was away. She loved pulling one
over on me, and I was usually a willing foil.
To her glee she nearly got me arrested
once. I don’t want to knowhow close I came.
At a girlfriend’s house, the spring-loaded
attic stairs came down and caught LMP full-
face. With a broken nose and puffy black
eyes, she looked an awful mess.
I moved our monthly junk food shop
ping trip forward as a moral booster. No
veggies, no fruit, nothing on the pyramid,
just junk.
The checkout clerk asked LMP what
happened to her, to which she replied,
“Poppa Joe says I just won’t listen.”
Our escape through the parking lot was
slowed by her howling laughter, dragging
feet and relishing a moment of “schaden
freude.” A few miles down the road, she
smirked that we left our junk food at the
register. I wasn’t going back.
LMP is the mother of Harvey, “The Lit
tle Guy.” TLG was joined yesterday by a baby
brother, “Joseph.”
TLG is curious. He is accustomed to
successfully questioning his dad, an engi
neering graduate of Georgia Tech, and get
ting good, cogent answers.
Last week TLG asked me what clouds
are made of. Water.
“How does it get up there?” Evapora
tion.
“What’s that?” Ask your dad.
But after that I began to reminisce about
how, as a child, I reacted to weather.
I was as befuddled as this five-year-old
the first time I saw hail and asked my dad
how that happened.
As a Boy Scout in South Georgia, sum
mer rains were common and harmless. Get
ting wet was no big deal. It’s just water.
The memory of walking in the rain with
the right girl made an ordinary Saturday af
ternoon a snapshot of that time.
I sat on the porch of the mountain cabin
shelling field peas into a lap of newspapers
with my uncle and aunt. Rain and small ice
pellets pounded the tin roof creating a wall
of sound. Conversation was impossible.
Sunday afternoon I’d had enough re
membering. Thunder was miles away. The
rain gentle.
It was cool on my back. My tee shirt was
soaked. My sneakers became squishy.
The Kansas Woman watched me walk
down the hallway with a question in her
eyes.
It would have been easier to explain
“evaporation.”
joenphillips@yahoo.com
Recalling the best and worst
of Centennial Olympic Games
Twenty-
five years ago
this week, Bill
Clinton was
winding up his
first term as
president and
trying to
remember if he
knew someone
named Monica
Lewinsky.
Newt Gingrich was riding high as U.S.
Speaker of the House. The Atlanta
Braves were in the process of winning
the National League Championship.
(They would lose to the New York
Yankees in the World Series.) Braveheart
was the Picture of the Year. ER was the
top-rated television series.
Billy Payne, a real estate attorney
and former UGA football star, was
about to see his dream of bringing the
Centennial Olympic Games to Atlanta
come to fruition, and I was doing my
damnedest to help him. Leave it to
English author Charles Dickens to
concisely sum up that experience for
me: It was the best of times, it was the
worst of times.
The best of times was some 10,000
athletes from 197 countries competing
in 26 different sports, most of whom
were eliminated in their first round of
competition, but who will always and
forevermore be known as Olympians.
There was the dramatic moment of
seeing a palsied Muhammed Ali light
the Olympic flame after the Olympic
Torch had wended its way across the
country to enthusiastic crowds. There
were a lot of best of times.
There were also some worst of
times. The bombing in Centennial
Olympic Park midway through the
Games. We had been assured by federal
authorities that while there was always
the possibility of a random act of
violence, they had the people and skills
to find the perpetrators quickly. Yeah,
right. Eric Rudolph, who set off the
bomb, ran free for five years before he
was caught climbing out of a dumpster
by a rookie police deputy in North
Carolina.
The worst of times also included
special interest groups using the
Olympics as a platform to espouse
their particular cause, from state
flaggers to labor unions to
environmentalists to the disabled,
feminists, gay and anti-gay groups,
inner city advocates, the Christian
Right and the Concerned Black Clergy
- the list was endless and mean-
spirited.
The City of Atlanta provided both
the best and worst of times. The city
was totally unprepared for what hosting
the Games entailed. They saw it merely
as a way of making money. As one
bureaucrat angrily stated in a meeting,
“What good is having the Olympic
Games in Atlanta if we can’t make a
buck off them?” It got worse. The city’s
marketing director talked of beaming
ads off the moon and putting ad boards
on stray dogs, making us an
international joke before the first spade
had been placed in the ground.
Even though the city was
indemnified from any tax liability - we
raised $1.7 billion privately to stage the
By Dick Yarbrough
Centennial Olympic Games - they
undertook an ambush marketing
campaign with our sponsors’
competitors. A sidewalk vendors
program was a financial disaster,
clogging downtown streets and making
the city look like a third-world country
on steroids. Atlanta showed the world
they were no more the Great
International City they claimed to be
than Hahira is the Lima Bean Capital of
the World.
So, how was that the best of times?
I was asked by the Atlanta Business
Chronicle to write a guest editorial a
couple of years later looking back on
the experience. I was not kind. I
skewered the city, the business
community and the local media for
blowing a great opportunity and being
unable to walk their big talk. The
column caused a sensation. I was asked
to write another one and another one
and now more than two decades and
several thousand columns later, I am
still at it.
Looking back 25 years, I choose to
remember the best of those times. I am
proud to have been a part of a group of
outstanding, dedicated people who
helped stage the 1996 Centennial
Olympic Games. It wasn’t easy but we
did it. We sold 8.6 million tickets,
including more tickets to women’s
events alone than Barcelona had sold
total tickets four years earlier. Some
200 million television viewers and 5
million spectators saw 32 world records
and 111 Olympic records established.
And don’t forget the 50,000 volunteers
who gave new meaning to the term
Southern Hospitality.
Despite the frustrations, nothing I
went through rises to the level of what
Tokyo will be facing in a couple of
weeks. Talk of beaming ads off the
moon seems pretty tame today
compared to a pandemic. Now, that is
truly the worst of times.
You can reach Dick Yarbrough at dick@
dickyarbrough.com; at P.O. Box 725373, At
lanta, Georgia 31139 or on Facebook at www.
facebook.com/dickyarb.
®" c AJiuance
(The Advance Publishing Co., Inc)
PO Box 669, 205 E. First Street,
Vidalia, GA 30475
Telephone: (912) 537-3131 FAX: (912) 537-4899
E-mail: theadvancenews@gmail.com
The Advance, U. S. P. S. #659-000, successor to The Advance and The
Lyons Progress, entered weekly at Vidalia, GA Post Office. Periodical
Postage paid at Vidalia, GA 30474 under Act of Congress, March
4, 1886. P.O. Box 669, East First Street, Wm. F. Ledford, Sr. Publisher.
Subscription Rates per year: $40.00 in county, $55.00 out of 304
zip code. (POSTMASTER: send address changes to The ADVANCE,
P.O. Box 583, Vidalia, GA 30475).
Copyright © 202L Advance Publishing Co., Inc. All rights reserved. The design,
concept and contents of The Advance are copyrighted and may not be
reproduced in part or whole without written permission from the publisher.
R.E. "LID" LEDFORD, PUBLISHER
1924-1976
WILLIAM F. “BILL" LEDFORD SR., PUBLISHER
1976-2013
Publisher & Managing Editor:
WILLIAM F. LEDFORD JR.
Vice President:
THE LATE ROSE M. LEDFORD
Regional Editor:
DEBORAH CLARK
Pagination/Typography:
LEANNE RICHARDSON
Quality Control
MILLIE PERRY
Graphic Design:
MATTHEW WATERS
Sports Editor/Graphic Design:
MIKE BRANCH
Director of Advertlslng/Sales:
DANIEL FORD
Office Manager:
BONNIE BAILEY
Financial Manager:
CINDY LAWRENCE
Contributing Writers:
JOE PHILLIPS, JOHN CONNER, DICK YARBROUGH & AMBER NAGLE
NATIONAL NEWSPAPER
ASSOCIATION
Member of the Georgia Press
Association and the National
Newspaper Association
Winning