Newspaper Page Text
Forsyth Life ■ %
Forsyth County News—Sunday, August 10,2008 * * 4 *' *
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HARRIS BLACKWOOD
Columnist
A voice not
soon to be
forgotten
I der healed n 1983, and and broke my because mother her hip. fell of the In off time, break a lad¬ it
she was sensitive to changes in the
weather.
I can tell the weather better
Sharpe,” she
used to say.
Sharpe was an
Atlanta televi¬
sion institution
for many
years.
The hip
was the
first time I had really seen my
mother sidelined. For a few weeks,
she had to use a walker. She spent a
lot of time watching television.
Mama was not a sports fan. She
understood the very basics of base¬
ball and basketball. She didn’t care
much for football.
But the awful lineup of summer
reruns forced her to turn over to
channel 17 to watch the Braves. It
was that summer that she became a
baseball fan.
Toward the end of the season,
she was getting around better and I
took her to a Braves game, walker
and all.
Mama pretended to enjoy it, but
she didn’t. She didn’t have her
trusted friends Skip, Pete and Ernie
to tell her what was going on. At
• home, the story of the boys of sum¬
mer was told in complete detail by
the guys in the booth.
When we left, somebody invit¬
ed us to go through the tunnel to
make it easier on Mama. We came
by an elevator and who stepped off
but Skip Caray. She spoke to him
quickly and he wished her a speedy
recovery.
We would see him a few years
later when we went to an affiliate
day when I was with WDUN. I
took Mama and she had a blast. I
” brought along a radio for her to lis¬
ten to the play-by-play.
Mama’s love for the Braves
continued to grow and she was so
excited when they started winning
in the 1990s.
She felt a special kinship to
Skip, having met him a couple of
times. I thought about both of them
in the past few days when news
came of Skip’s death.
Skip Carey with his nasal deliv¬
ery didn’t have the warm, friendly
sound of his cohort Ernie Johnson
Sr., but'he took you to the game.
My dad, like many of his age,
grew up listening to baseball games
on the radio and never lost his
affinity for listening to them. Even
after the days of televised games,
he would sit out on the porch on a
glider and listen to the Braves.
Skip, Ernie and Pete Van
Wieren were our guys. The TV
gurus have tried to tell us in
recent years that they weren’t
telegenic enough. They’ve tried to
bring younger guys with better
hair and whiter teeth to call the
games.
What happened to the day
when folksy seemed to work?
The legendary Dizzy Dean
murdered the King’s English, but
folks loved to hear him talk about
someone who “slud” into third.
An English teacher once wrote
him a letter about his use of
ain’t. »«
Dean fired back that, “A lot of
folks who ain’t sayin’ ‘ain’t,’ ain’t
eatin’. So, Teach, you learn ‘em
English, and I’ll learn ‘em base¬
ball.
It’s true in other sports.
Georgia folks love Larry
Munson and are holding their
breath that he can make it through
this home season. Tech folks still
talk about the late A1 Ciraldo in
glowing terms.
We love ’em because they
become our friends, and we lost a
really good one in Skip Caray.
Harris Blackwood is the
author of "When Old Mowers
Die." His e-mail address is har
rish ®forsythnews. com.
ll a, m
Making +. * * • * - \ * - i
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over a k
A.
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mustang
.
Forsyth trainer works, ’
i
r
trains wild horse for i
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national challenge
By Ben Holcombe r f
Associate Editor
For a horse just two months removed from the
arid Nevada wild, Eric Gray’s lean, black-tinted
mustang now carries a saddle as naturally as
some men carry a plain leather wallet. a
The 3-year-old gelding walks, canters,
trots, backs up and, with a little instruc
tion from Gray, could probably go rus
tie up a tomato sandwich and glass of f
sweet tea. #1
From what I’ve seen so far,” said fm f
Gray, a stout, 28-year-old farrier and * A
horse trainer, “he’s come a lot farther
along than the majority of horses I’ve
worked. He’s [still] got a long way to
come.
The horse, appropriately named
Johnny Cash, seems to find it easy,
pleasant work in exchange for tem
, porary quarters on Gray’s rolling,
green home place. Blackthorn
Farms in northwestern Forsyth
County.
Johnny Cash’s days spent with
more than 33,000 others just like
him foraging the American West
for dried up prairie grass and a
trickling stream have blown away
like tumbleweeds and dust.
This wild horse Shangri-La is
a place where the sun rises and sets
on a North Georgia barn replete
See MUSTANG, Page 8B
'• -5?
Meet the cowboys
From noon to 5 p.m. Aug. 16, Blackthorn Farms will hold a day of equine
activities, including chances to meet the
three Georgia horse trainers in the 2008 Extreme Mustang Makeover.
Blackthorn Farms is at 6560 Mockingbird Road.
Admission to the event is free with the purpose of helping raise
awareness of the wild horse crisis. Donations will be accepted.
For more information about the competition
go online at www.extrememustangmakeover.com.
For more on mustangs go online at www.mustangheritagefoundation.org.
For more information about Gray and his horse, Johnny Cash,
go online at www.blackthornfarms.com.
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forsythnews- com 9
On the Web
Watch video of #
Eric Gray working
with his wild mustang
Johnny Cash
online at
forsythnews.com.
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Photo above Jim Dean, Left photo sufyrtltted
Above, Eric Gray mounts the mustang and
begins riding. Left, from left, Gray, Marc
Chancey and Drew Olsen are Georgia’s three
trainers in the Extreme Mustang Makeoyen
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