Monday Funeral

Lang was in town this weekend, and hung out with our friend Bruce, whose father had died. Lang couldn’t change his flight, and went back to NYC early this AM. His parents and sister were at the funeral, as were a few other old friends. Bruce is around 50, never married, but was supposed to be at a NC beach this week with 3 families we know…so those friends weren’t at the funeral. Bruce said he was leaving tomorrow for the beach. The funeral lasted an hour, but two old doctors got up and told some good stories…one even quoted Lewis Grizzard.

Learned something at the funeral…the original Piedmont Hospital was located where AFC stadium was built. Bruce’s dad used to operate there. During the funeral I noticed a lone young (30-ish) black man sitting in the balcony…nicely dressed, but no suit. As the crowd filed out of the front of the sanctuary to the reception, the man started shouting a message from the Lord. Strange.

I like the Turner South Braves replays…I’ll come in late and catch the end of a game, then watch the beginning of the game later the same night. I’ve noticed on the TV listings that they’re continuing to do it. Wonder if they had a long rain delay, and they returned to regularly scheduled programming, if eventually they’d show a replay of the beginning of the game while waiting for the rain to stop (sorry).

Scoring all those runs reminds me of 1996…wasn’t that the year they were down to the Cardinals in the NLDS, then came roaring back and blew them out to win that series. Skip has a radio commercial about it, that they keep replaying. 2000 must’ve been when the Cards killed them. That was the year I was in Charlotte and watched the playoffs at Jocks & Jills. When Sid slid I was alone in my Greensboro hotel room. 1996 I was at the last game in AFC…the loss to the Yankees. Young Will could’ve gone, but he was sick that night.

I’m going to be a great old guy, remembering all this stuff. Like yesterday’s Terrance Moore column on the ND/GT fish/bottle throwing game. If you read it on line, all the commenters were more accurate than Moore and Montana. I was at that game, as well as the 3 – 3 tie in 1980, but was still in high school when GT beat ND for homecoming in 1976.

Never played at the SCC, though I knew where it was. It went to Dekalb College in Clarkston for 2 quarters before it was built, and drove past the site every day. That was my sophomore year, when I had flunked out of Tech. Learned how to study, made A’s at Dekalb, and did ok the rest of the time at Tech. CPA saw Shannon Melindi there. Reading about her, it appears she worked at a salon in Virginia Highlands…Ceil and I probably used to walk past it, and I would jog past it as well.

We tried to see Pirates at the beach…the 9 pm show was sold out 30 minutes early. That was the closest we got to the Pelicans game…the ballpark was across from the theatre/mall. The game was already in the 6th inning…you could see the scoreboard. Ceil will take the kids to see it this week during the day, and I’ll take them again when it gets to the dollar theatre.

Our group is supposed to break up sometime…our leader Lee is pretty by the book…but he keeps scheduling meetings throughout this summer, though many members are traveling. We missed this past Friday, and they canceled one when I was in NY. The rest of the group isn’t crazy about disbanding, though it’s been a while since we’ve all been together. The wives and kids had a pool party July 5th, and are having another one tomorrow. So I don’t know when our group is ending. I told leader Lee that I didn’t want to be a new leader, and another guy didn’t want to either.