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Sunday, July 20, 2014

Who I Met at the Beach

 A couple of guys in our beach crowd are big Washington Redskins fans, because before the Panthers came to town the Charlotte TV stations aired Redskins games. Sunday afternoon out on the beach George recognized a grey-haired man on the beach as a Redskins assistant coach Danny Smith, The coach was happy to talk football with George, Larry, and Phil. When Smith saw the Clemson umbrella he mentioned that he had served as an assistant coach at Clemson under Danny Ford.

I happened to be wearing a gold Georgia Tech Football T-shirt. I was sitting in my chair facing the ocean, in front of where the coach was sitting. After he finished talking Redskins and Clemson football, Smith went out of his way to walk over and talk to me about Georgia Tech. He was on Bobby Ross' staff in 1990 when the Jackets won the national championship. He showed me the attache he was carrying - from his days at Tech. I mentioned that I work with George O'Leary's daughter, whom he remembered. Smith said that Ralph Freidgen was his son's godfather. I asked him if he was the same Danny Smith who quarterbacked Tech in the 70's, but he wasn't. Smith and his wife are staying in the same high-rise that we're in.

The Coach Danny Smith we met is the special teams coach of the Steelers. That's why big Larry spoke to him for so long - Larry is a Steelers fan. Monday we were out on the beach and Danny walked up and handed Larry a Steelers T-shirt, a Steelers shaving razor, and other Steelers items. Nice guy.

Read 50 pages of John Grisham's first novel A Time to Kill out on the beach Sunday. Great so far, but at 500 pages I've got a long way to go. Also started Don Zimmer's first book last night after a late dinner of pasta, chicken, salad, garlic bread, and watermelon.

The ban on tents on the beach is being enforced. Sunday I was able to stay in the shade of one of Phil's three umbrellas. The ban was enacted because supposedly emergency beach vehicles could not move about quickly enough. Yesterday the vehicles had plenty of room. There were no emergencies, but the vehicles were going so fast that had a small child darted out from the dunes, the vehicles would not have been able to stop in time (later in the week this very thing happened, and a tragedy was narrowly avoided). Our condo gave out the mayor's contact info so vacationers could protest. I am told the mayor's other job is hairdresser.

Monday night we ate at Stevens, the little seafood restaurant in Little River that my mother in law likes so much. Got back in time for the last episode of 24. Watched a little Home Run Derby, but then I went to bed.

Guy, my new friend from the Pelicans, called while I was out on the beach Monday. Finally got in tough with him Tuesday morning. He had my prizes, so I drove my Civic down to the stadium to pick them up. They had the scoreboard turned on showing the HTC triple play ad, and they had me stand on the dugout and pose for pictures with the loot - Vizio 40" HGTV, a Hewlett Packard laptop, and 7" Samsung Galaxy tablet. I left the laptop and TV in the car, and at noon Will and MC left for home.

Tuesday afternoon it rained, so I played on my laptop.

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