About The Advance. (Vidalia, Ga.) 2003-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 18, 2021)
gfre Aiiuancg The ADVANCE, August 18, 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 Doomed : rom the Porch By Amber Nagle It was one of those hot, humid, hazy Georgia af ternoons. The me teorologist on the morning news had warned of pop-up thundershowers after 2 p.m. I walked out onto the porch around 3 o’clock and noticed that the air was notice ably heavy, and it was hard to take a deep breath. Clouds were building in the skies beyond our treetops. Around 4 o’clock that afternoon, our neighbors in the distance decided to walk from their back porch to their barn when they felt it. “Electricity moved through both of us,” Ashley told me a few days later. “It didn’t knock us to the ground, but it stunned us, and we were messed up for a while.” Our neighbors had been struck by light ning before anyone in our community even knew that a storm was right on top of us. Lightning probably struck a nearby tree or structure and the energy traveled outward and up through their bodies — a phenom enon known as ground current. Lightning is one of the leading causes of weather-related fatalities. It kills an average of 49 people each year in the US and injures hundreds more. Some survivors have life long neurological damage from being struck by lightning. Others suffer hearing loss. Our neighbors are lucky. They survived. I had a great-aunt who was not so lucky. In 1929, two of my great-aunts, two- great uncles, and a cousin traveled to New Jersey for the summer to find work. They lived in a brownstone in Camden, worked during the days, and sent money home to their parents here and there. The boys found work at Radio Corporation of America (better known as RCA) and a drug store. In August that year, my Great-aunt Amy went to work in the New Jersey peach fields. While Amy and the other pickers were in the field one day, a thunderstorm blew up fast and everyone in the field took shelter under a nearby tree. Lightning struck the tree. Amy died instantly. She was only twen ty-one years old and had an entire lifetime ahead of her. The family was devastated. Ev eryone mourned. My Great-aunt Beauty took care of the many arrangements necessary to send Amy’s lifeless body back to Georgia. The family buried her in the Sardis Baptist Church Cemetery in Wheeler County. As a child, I heard the story of my great- aunt’s death many times, and as a result, I have always been fearful and overly cau tious when it comes to thunder and light ning storms. If I’m outside and notice a gray cloud in the sky or hear a distant rumble, I quickly move indoors. The odds of being struck by lightning in a given year are only around 1 in 500,000, but why take a chance when it can kill you “deader than dead?” Other than lightning, have you ever paused and pondered the many ways Moth er Nature lashes out at us? We, as humans, are basically walking around this world with targets on our backs. A 7.2 magnitude earthquake in Haiti killed hundreds of people this week. An unknown number are still missing in the rubble. Every year, we watch earth hurl hur ricane after hurricane toward the US like a bowling ball rolling down the alley trying to knock down as many pins as possible. Wildfires are ravaging the West right now. Every evening, the news shows people fleeing amid flames as high as treetops — like they are escaping Hell itself. Thousands of acres (land and structures) have been de stroyed out there this year. And volcanoes threaten human life, too. The petrified people of Pompeii, Italy, learned that lesson the hard way. And if all of that isn’t alarming enough, we’ve been dealing with a deadly virus the last two years. It’s killed over 4 million folks worldwide, and it’s just one virus of many. World renowned astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson often says that the earth is a deadly place, and at every opportunity, it is trying to kill us. He says this half in jest, and half in truth, citing sinkholes, tsunamis, sharks, bears, viruses, etc. I think he’s right. It does seem that the earth is out to get us these days — as if we are all doomed. As for our neighbors, they said the lightning strike incident was a wake up call for them. “Nothing makes you appreciate life like a near-death experience,” Ashley said. “We’re so happy to be alive.” New or New-To-Me Shoes Off the streets. As I write this to you, most of the kids are off the streets, out of the houses and back to school. In my memory, the days when school fired up after the summer break were cooler. There were football nights when dew formed on the grass. The benefit of playing on the wet field was that you looked dirtier, like you were doing something. Coach Kinsaul pointed out guys on the field still walking around in a clean uniform. “They haven't been on the ground yet,” he'd bellow, among other things. True, you can't do much as a defensive player in a football game and stay clean. There were as many brands of jeans as there were stores, and my mom bought a lot of my school clothes, “mail ordered.” There were subtleties about jeans she just didn't get. As I was entering the sixth grade, a string-wrapped package came containing two pair of jeans that were the right color of blue and the size was about right, but they felt a little funny when I tried them on. Mom just didn't understand why I'd object to wearing jeans with the zipper on the left side. The start of school ended barefoot days. We all had to get accustomed to wearing shoes again, whether they were new or “new to me.” I've worn hand-me-down shoes in the correct size that felt like someone else's shoes. A guy told me that he could identify the owner of a shoe by the imprint the foot made inside. Mr. Pierce owned a shoe shop and shine stand on South Main in Sapulpa, OK. Every morning there was a pile of un identified shoes at his door. After having coffee and a “Texas doughnut” (size of a dinner plate), I watched him sort through the shoes, marking the required repair with a piece of chalk. None of the shoes included the name of the owner. “These belong to Mr. Creekmore Wal lace, the lawyer; these are Mr. Blane's shoes, he's an accountant.” Mr. Pierce ran away from his Cleve land, Ohio, home at age twelve and headed to Sapulpa during the Oklahoma oil boom. He got job in a “tonsorial parlor,” another name for a barber shop. He shined shoes and ran errands for the prostitutes, who couldn't come out during the day except for Tuesdays. Saving every penny of his tips from prostitutes, he bought that barber shop within a few years and installed a row of shower stalls for the guys working the oil field. “Oil-field-hands” wanted to get clean and those shower stalls were my retire ment,” he said. At seventy something years old, when I met him, he had the shoe shop as an ex cuse to get out of the house. He was the most interesting man I ever knew. joenphillips@yahoo.com By Joe Phillips Dear Me Skeeter Skates and gang tired of political commentary While try ing to figure out whether to dangle my par ticiple in this hot weather or work up a sweat and split an in finitive, the phone rang. It was Skeeter Skates, propri etor of Skeeter Skates Tree Stump Removal and Plow Repair in Ryo, Georgia, and a charter member of the Ryo Morning Coffee Club in Ryo, Georgia. If you are not familiar with the Ryo Morning Coffee Club, it is com posed of Skeeter Skates, who func tions as the group’s facilitator; Wall eye, who runs the bait shop in Red Bud; Booger Bledsoe, who operates a roadside vegetable stand over on State Route 53; and Uncle Coot, recently retired after a long and distinguished career in the porta potty transporta tion industry. “We’ve got a question,” Skeeter said. “How come you newspaper boys and them TV yakkers are always talk ing about politics? Ain’t there any thing else going on in the world? Can’t you find something good to talk about for a change?” Actually, that was three questions, not one, but you don’t in terrupt the man when he is on a roll. Skeeter continued, “What you need to know is that most folks are tired of hearing about that oT orange haired boy from New York City who ain’t president anymore and that new voting law in Georgia that the folks who are raising cane about it, haven’t even read. Mostly overpaid actors and ballplayers. I can’t speak for every body in Ryo, but I know me and my colleagues in the Morning Coffee Club think you need to write about something else.” I told Skeeter that I was ahead of him. I don’t talk about either one of those subjects much anymore because it gets me a lot of cranky mail accusing me of being a liberal weenie or a red neck. Sometimes in the same column. I said I decided to talk about some thing less controversial like the state of organized religion. I cited the power struggle between the bishop of the North Georgia Methodist Conference and the largest church in the confer ence, Mt. Bethel United Methodist in Cobb County. In short, the bishop wants to move the pastor to another post, and the pastor and his congre gants disagree and are talking about disaffiliating with the Methodist Church. I suggested that as Christians, both parties should ask themselves what would Jesus do in a situation like this? One reader called that idea “silly” and thought I was suggesting Christ sit down with Satan and say, “Hey fella, let’s just cool it and work things out.” I don’t think Christ talks that way but, hey, that is not a bad idea. It’s better than what is happening now. Skeeter said maybe that would teach me not to opine on religion. Bi ble thumpers aren’t much on turning By Dick Yarbrough the other cheek and forgiveness. I wish he had told me that earlier. If I can’t write about politics and religion, what’s left? Walleye sug gested I let you all know about the es- oterica of raising red wrigglers. That’s bait shop talk for worms. He says if you put the creatures in rabbit ma nure, they will fatten up a lot quicker. Fish like fat worms. I told Walleye I would file that away for future consid eration, but I think I have told you all you want to know on that subject. Booger Bledsoe said that he was doing a brisk business in cantaloupes and apples and that broccoli would be available shortly. I didn’t tell Booger, but I will talk about Christ palavering with Satan before I will mention any thing having to do with broccoli. Uncle Coot said he had some in teresting and entertaining stories he could share about the dynamic porta potty transportation industry. With all due respect, I will try to get to those right after I’ve completely cov ered the stolen election, voting rights, red wrigglers, Christ and Satan and broccoli. Skeeter said he hoped the input from the group was instructive and would give me something to think about. In the meantime, he had a Dosko 721cc Kohler Electric Start Stump Grinder waiting for a 12-volt battery that wasn’t going to install it self. That meant this conversation was over. I always appreciate hearing from Skeeter Skates and the other members of the Ryo Morning Coffee Club and, as always, I will seriously consider their advice and counsel as I do with all my fans. That is after I have de cided whether to dangle my participle or split an infinitive. Which begs the question: Hey, what would Jesus do? You can reach Dick Yarbrough at dick@dickyarbrough.com; at P.O. Box 725373, Atlanta, 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 © 2021, 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
