“It will all come out OK, I hope so’’

In his Pulitzer Prize winning autobiography “Growing Up,’’ former New York Times columnist Russell Baker writes poignantly of what it was like to be a child during the Great Depression.
Baker’s story, published in 1982, chronicles the struggle of his widowed mother and her efforts to raise two children at the height of the Depression.
Taken in by relatives, the young widow’s best prospects for securing “a home of our own’’ appeared to be a marriage and Baker writes tenderly of a doomed romance between his mother, Elizabeth, and Oluf, a Danish immigrant who was a baker by trade.
The story is told first through Baker’s own memories of Oluf’s very proper parlor visits with his mom and later, when Oluf left to scour the country looking for work, through the letters exchanged between the two adults.
Oluf’s story resonates powerfully today. Before the Depression, Oluf had owned his own bakery. But the Depression forced him out of business. Initially, he found work at other bakeries in town, but as the economic disaster deepened, he was forced to hit the road in a wild and desperate effort to find work in his trade.
His letters to Elizabeth detail the story of his decline. At first, they are filled with hope and good humor, even though the job prospects remained unpromising. “Well it will all come out OK, I hope so,’’ he wrote.
But as time passed, Oluf began to lose hope and his letters began to betray his sense of despair. Finally, he wrote Elizabeth a last letter telling her not to write to him any more.
“I am lost and going and not interested in anything anymore,’’ he wrote. And with that, he simply disappeared into the Depression.
In March, the sale of the East Valley Tribune was approved and 19 of the remaining 33 newsroom employees were terminated. As a former Tribune editor and columnist, I found the news heart-breaking, if not unexpected.
I learned the fate of many of those former colleagues through their Facebook posts. As you might suspect, many of their friends and former co-workers left comments saying how sorry they were to hear the news and trying to offer some encouragement.
“I am so sorry to hear the news, but you are talented so you’ll find something,’’ was one of the general themes.
“This just means something better is coming your way!’’ was the tenor of the more hopeful responses.
But there were other comments that seemed to betray a sense of uncertainty.
“Good luck in your search.’’
“Hope you find something soon.’’
“Hang in there.’’
They say history is written by the winners and the survivors.
It is true there was a V.E. Day. It is also true a lot of fine soldiers never lived to see it. It is true that the country survived the Great Depression. But lost in the history are those who did not.
There is no way of knowing how many Olufs were crushed, maimed and destroyed by the Depression of the 1930s.
Similarly, we have no way of knowing how many of millions of Americans who have lost their jobs will become the Olufs of this generation.
It’s been almost three years since I was fired from the Tribune. As an ex-convict, I realize I go to the back on the line when new journalists enter the job market. In that sense, I am farther way from my goal than ever, which is why it is increasingly difficult for me to say, with any real conviction, “Well, it will all come out OK, I hope so.’’
To be honest, the notion that “tomorrow is another day’’ has become more of a necessary lie than a rallying point. More and more, I begin to fear that, like Oluf, I am “lost and going and not interested in anything anymore.’’
So when I encountered those former co-workers on Facebook, I did not encourage them to look to the future, because I have lost all confidence in it.
I simply wrote, “I am so sorry.’’
It is the only honest thing I can say.

Slim Smith is a free-lance writer living in Tempe. You can reach him via email at slim215980@hotmail.com.

Savin' the Wave

A couple of weeks ago, an old friend from high school, Kathy Wallace, sent me an invitation to join a website dedicated to our high school.
Apparently, this is the latest thing in social networking. All you have to do is plug in the name of your school (be sure to included “high school’’ followed by a dot followed by the letters ning.com).
Well, I’ve been strolling down memory lane ever since, getting in touch with old classmates, some of whom I haven’t seen in 30 years.Perhaps because of this, I find that long subdued memories from high school are emerging once again.
And, maybe because it is September and football season, my mind drifted back to a particular memory of my days as a member of the Tupelo High Golden Wave football team.
Now, I know what you are thinking: I am going to blather on about how I rescued the Wave from certain defeat with an inspiring heroic effort in the final desperate seconds and was ridden off the field on the shoulders of my teammates and into the embraces of a bevy of lithe, awe-struck young cheerleaders.
Well, if I were Lea Paslay or Tom Alef or Felix Rutledge, that might well be the story I would tell.But even highly selective, much embellished memory does not permit me to tell such a tale, mainly because a bunch of my old football teammates have found this blog and would quickly expose me as a fraud.
So, the story I will tell, while much less heroic, is compelling in it own sort of humbling way.
If memory serves, it was 1976. The game in question was against Pine Bluff, Ark.,
Now, this was a momentous game for the Wave, not because it was a game against a team from a neighboring state, but because it marked the first - and only - time in my football career that we actually got to spend the night at an out of town game.Because Pine Bluff was about a seven-hour bus ride, it was determined that we would bus over early in the afternoon on Thursday so that we would be rested and ready for the game on Friday night.
There was a rumor that several of the players sneaked out of our Holiday Inn rooms and walked a few hundred yards to a Pizza Inn, where they bought pitchers of beer and played the juke box for a couple of hours. I suspect there was some truth to this rumor, mainly because I was there.
Now, in 1976, I was not prominent in the plans for head coach Dennis Waite and the coaching staff. I think I was third or fourth team at about five positions.
So, for me, the trip to Pine Bluff was not accompanied by any pressure. I figured I would do what I almost always did at games - convince a friend in the grandstands to sneak me a bag of popcorn, which I concealed in my helmet.
I figured I would munch on popcorn and watch the game and the cheerleaders; my attention being equally divided between the two.
Let me pause here to discuss the cheerleaders of my generation. They were generally not chosen because of their athleticism, although , of course, there were sometimes athletic girls on the squad. Back in those days, cheerleaders were chosen primarily because they were good looking, energetic and could be convinced to shout, with great zeal, such inane things as "Two bits. Four bits. Six bits. A dollar. All for Tupelo, stand up and holler!''
I liked the cheerleaders a great deal - and from a great distance. The idea of approaching any of these beautiful, flawless creatures would have been, in my mind, an act of unimaginable arrogance.
Girls like that go for the players who don't stand around like a doofus eathing popcorn out of their helmets. So, my strategy when it came to high school girls was to focus on the flawed ones, much like a lion picking out the wounded wildebeest from a great herd of "really hot'' wildebeests.
Well, there were no wounded wildebeests on our cheerleading squad. They were all wonderful, exalted creatures.But I could still admire them from afar, like fine art.
So, while Coach Waite and his staff poured over their game plan with the starting lineup just prior to the game, I already had my game plan down and I was very confident about it, too.
But about an hour before we were to bus to the stadium, word began to leak out: Clay Stewart, one of the starting outside linebackers had come down with some sort of stomach flu and wouldn’t be able to play. Then, I got word that another player had suffered a similar malady. And another. And another.
By the time we got on the bus, about a dozen players were out of commission.And as we moved slowly down the side streets toward the stadium, it began to dawn on me that I might actually play, and not just in the last few minutes when the outcome had already been determined.
Rob Mosely got the start in Clay Stewart’s spot. The back-up to Rob was…well, I wasn’t sure who it was. Heck, it could even be me, for all I knew.
But as the game progressed, I sort of forgot all about what might happen if Rob got hurt.
About three minutes into the second half, with the Wave holding a narrow lead, I was munching on popcorn and ogling the cheerleaders when I happened to turn my attention to what was happening on the field.
Just then, Rob went down in a pile of players and didn't get up.Now by this time, I was well down toward the end of the bench, which is a good spot to be in if you happen to be eating popcorn out of your helmet. Coaches generally frown on players eating snacks on the sideline. You would be surprised how touchy coaches can be about things like that, in fact.
Then, I heard this booming voice: It was Fred Davis, one of the coaches, a wiry black man of indeterminable age who spoke with a gruff, guttural voice that you could hardly understand.
“Miff’’ (Smith),’’ he bellowed.“Miff!’’ he yelled again, as I was trying to ditch the popcorn.
And it hit me: I WAS GOING INTO THE GAME!!!
Sprinting toward the middle of the sidelines, where the coaching staff prowled, I quickly snapped by chin strap.
“Miff!’’ Davis yelled. “I’m here coach!’’ I responded, ready to sprint out onto field.
“Good!’’ Davis barked. “We need your helmet.’’
So, I gave coach Davis my helmet and sort of slinked back down to the end of the sideline. It was embarrassing. Not only that, I didn't have anything to eat popcorn out of.
We bused home after the game and my buddy, Steve Stanfield, gave me a ride home. I walked in the door about 4 a.m. and mama was sitting in her chair in the living room. Mama just couldn't sleep until all her boys were home.
“Who won?’’ she asked sleepily, emerging from her chair to give me a hug.
“We did,’’ I said. “24-16, I think.’
’“Oh, good,’’ she said. “Did you get to play?’’
“Nah,’’ I said. “...but my helmet did.’’
So that's my football story.
I know. It ain't exactly “Rudy.’’

Breakfast in prison

At 5 a.m., a crackling sound emanates from the wall-mounted speakers in A Pod of Building 4 at Florence West prison and a voice that resembles that of any adult on a Charlie Brown special makes the first of the day’s many announcements. Much like everything else at Florence West (aside from the locks, of course) the speaker is broken, so only a careful listener can make out the message:
“The chow hall is now open.’’
And with that a few dozen traffic cones come to life like a rejected screenplay for a Disney movie: “Fantasia II: Mickey Goes To Prison.’’
In Arizona, all state prisoners are dressed head to toe in orange, most likely for the same reason that hunters wear orange: It is the most conspicuous of colors, which is important to the authorities should an inmate manage to escape the grounds and make a break for freedom across the interminable desert.
So Charlie Brown’s teacher mumbles incoherently into the intercom and a few dozen traffic cones shuffle off across the dirt-and-pea-gravel exercise yard to the chow hall.
Breakfast is optional and most of the inmates choose to sleep through the meal. I was always one of those who roused from their fitful slumber for breakfast, not because I was hungry, but because I had built it into my routine.
As one makes the transition from human being to convict, there are some lessons you learn pretty fast. One of those lessons is that the days are an eternity without some sort of regimen.
In county jail, where the only rules that are enforced diligently are those designed to ensure the inmate’s misery, the routine is as important as it is difficult to create. And if is true at most county jails, it is even more pronounced in the Maricopa County Jail system, the personal gulag of the populist narcissist known Sheriff Joe Arpaio.
The sheriff defends the degrading, dehumanizing conditions of his jails by saying they serve as a deterrent, but the man who makes that argument is either ignorant or a liar. The sheriff is not ignorant.
All I know is that virtually every inmate I encountered at the county’s Durango Jail had been in county custody before, some many times.
I spent the first 34 days of my 122-day incarceration for DUI at Durango while awaiting sentencing. There, confined in a pod that was designed to hold 36 inmates but occupied by 70, the long, dark days dragged on in endless tedium. By federal law, inmates were supposed to be allowed an hour of time in the exercise yard six days a week. In my 34 days at Durango, we were given exercise-yard privileges eight times, three of those times before dawn, when the guards knew that few would wake to take advantage of it. So mainly, we spent the days crowded together in that grim little pod.
The small day room was furnished only with four long tables and a battered 19-inch TV, which hung from a high ceiling. Inmates were allowed to watch only two channels – ESPN and Animal Planet, alternating days.
A few inmates had decks of playing cards and some of the men had fashioned crude dominos out of small soaps – the kind you find in cheap hotels.
But you can only play cards or dominos for so long. And when you’ve watched the same pro bowling tournament or the same lion eat the same wildebeest on TV every damn day, the monotony of life starts to weigh on your psyche and your temper. And you find that before too long you begin to despise the other men for no other reason than the fact that they are always there.
Some inmates, I suspect men for whom county jail had become simply another part of life, had perfected the art of sleeping away the long days. In some ways, sleeping was like escaping to freedom, almost like cheating the authorities.
“Wake up and do your time!’’ an inmate would chide a friend who was attempting to sleep off his sentence.
Me? I slept as much as I could, but I was not an expert. So I tried to find other ways to occupy the time. I read whatever printed material managed to get into the pod. I wrote letters, tons and tons of letters, all of them dripping with anger and fear, despair and bitterness and shame. I helped some of the illiterate inmates write letters, too.
But the main diversion, the one thing that I was able to build a daily routine around, was walking. I walked miles, dozens of miles, hundreds of miles.
Estimating that each step was about two feet, I calculated that walking the circumference of the day room 35 times (it took about 76 steps to complete the circuit) would be the rough equivalent of a mile. Using the stub of pencil, I made a mark on the peeling plaster of the wall by my cell each time I made a lap in order to keep track. I tried to walk four to five miles between each “count’’ – when inmates were required to be on their bunks while the Detention Officers accounted for each prison.
At first, the other inmates wondered what I was doing. They would laugh and call me “walking man.’’ But I took it in stride and often I would joke that I was just trying what worked for Joshua.
“You know the story of Joshua, right?’’ I would say, a question mostly met with blank stares. “Well, he ordered the Israelites to walk around Jericho seven times. And when they finished, they blew the trumpets and the walls fell down.’’
“You think it will work?’’ one naïve young inmate asked skeptically.
“Probably not,’’ I said, laughing, “unless you have a trumpet in your bunk.’’
Before long, though, some of the other inmates began to join me, just to pass the time. At 47 years old, I somehow became a father figure to many of the young inmates and on those walks I would listen as they told me their stories. They were just kids, I realized, as they began to open up to me. They missed their mamas. They were afraid. They were confused. They were angry.
I walked anywhere from 16 to 20 miles per day, for more than 30 days, until that wonderful day when I was “rolled up’’ and left Durango for good.
Not long after I left prison, while on a visit to the Phoenix Zoo, I happened past the big cat exhibit and saw noticed that the tigers constantly walked back and forth through their enclosure. I think I have a pretty good idea why they do that now. Prison has ruined the zoo for me. Too many cages. Too many animals pacing in senseless boredom around their enclosures.
During my last court appearance before going into custody, I stood in court, officially pleaded guilty and was told by the judge to move to the other side of the courtroom where I would sign various papers and be taken into custody by a pot-bellied county detention officer (a redundant description). The officer extended a pair of handcuffs.
“Can I sign the papers first?’’ I asked.
“No,’’ he said, slapping the handcuffs on my wrist.
That was the only time during my entire prison experience that jail personnel were in a hurry to do anything.
And that explains why it took my five days to get from Durango Jail in Phoenix to Florence West, a distance of about 60 miles. I could walked there is less than half the time.
Instead, I spent five days at Alhambra Jail in Phoenix for “processing,’’ which entailed changing out of those laughable black-and-white striped clothing that county prisoners wear into to the orange pants that identifies you as the property of the Arizona Department of Corrections, being photographed, fingerprinted and assigned to one of the various institutions located throughout the state. They also give you a Department of Corrections number. It becomes your official identity. My number is 215980. No one else will ever have that number. It will be my number, my identity forever. The Arizona Department of Correction, sort of like elephants, never forgets.
For all of that, it took five days.
Anytime I hear about how the jails and prison are understaffed, I have to laugh. There’s not a damn one of them that doesn’t spend the majority of his time on his fat, lazy butts. I paint with a broad brush on this point, I realize, but I’ll stand by the description and extend apologies to the three or four employees for whom it is not an accurate portrayal.
But I had finally made it to Florence and soon started a new routine, which still included walking. It also included getting up at 5 a.m. and stumbling off toward the chow hall.
Just outside Building 4, a half-dozen of the old-timers, men in their 60s and 70s, sat at one of the metal picnic tables, smoking cigarettes and drinking the instant coffee they had heated up in their pods.
They sat there every morning, smoking and drinking their coffee, scowling silently at the start of a new day.
The first time I saw them, they reminded me of the two cranky old men who sit in the balcony on The Muppet Show and rain insults on the actors below.
“Cheer up, boys,’’ I sang cheerily as I passed them on the way to the chow hall, “it’s only prison.’’
Their groans and mild curses followed me as I moved on toward the chow hall and I had to laugh.
“Here goes another day,’’ I told myself.

Another decade, another challenge

My January column for the Times Publications....


A new year and a new decade has commenced since my last column and because that doesn’t happen every day, I feel compelled to note this development in this space, even though I’ve long since lost confidence in the possibility that a man’s fortunes can be altered by the simple turn of a calendar.
It wasn’t always that way, though. When I was younger, much younger, I looked forward to the arrival of each new year with great excitement and the approach of a new decade was nothing short of awe-inspiring.
By a quirk, the ‘10s will be the seventh decade I witnessed, having arrived on this mortal coil at the tail-end of the ‘50s.
I recall that in early December of 1979, I sat in the little closet that passed as the “editor’s office’’ for The Chieftain, the student newspaper at Itawamba Junior College in Fulton, Miss., and pondered the momentous arrival of the ‘80s. As editor of the paper, I wrote the editorial for each monthly edition. Of course, I also wrote the news, sports and just about everything else that got into print, having mastered neither the art of delegation nor recruitment. It seemed only fitting that the last editorial of 1979 note the encroachment of the new decade.
That editorial is long lost to posterity, of course, so I do not recall precisely what I concluded about the impending arrival of the 80s. I’m sure it was a very optimistic treatment of the subject matter. My audience consisted of college freshmen and sophomores, which meant we were all young enough to steadfastly believe that we would change the world, leave or mark, go down in history, that sort of thing.
I fancied that that someday I would be invited back to Itawamba to talk about my journey from editor of The Chieftain to editor of The New York Times. - this was back when being the editor of the New York Times meant something, of course.
Well, if any of the 2,000 or so students who attended IJC (or “Harvard On The Tombigbee’’ as we liked to call it) managed to change the world, they did so without my being aware of it. If you were a student at IJC in 1979 and went on the change the world, drop me a line and I’ll be sure to acknowledge it.
As for me, I obviously fell considerably short of the mark. I never did manage to become the editor of The New York Times, of course, although I did figure out a way to earn a paycheck in the newspaper business for more than 25 years. I know that doesn’t sound like much, but try doing that now.
While I do not recall the particulars of that editorial welcoming the arrival of the new decade, I do remember writing that the ‘80s would be the most formative decade in our lives, reasoning that it would be the decade where we would find a profession, find a mate and even start a family.
And that is precisely what happened to me. I found all three. I began my career in 1982 at the Columbus (Miss.) Commercial Dispatch. I was married in 1986 and welcomed my first child, Corey, into the world in 1987.
A career, a mate and a child: That’s a pretty eventful decade, you have to admit, especially when you take into account how the decade began. I entered the ‘80s broke, uncertain of the future and alone.
Which is pretty much the way I enter the ‘10s.
So much for progress.
Maybe because of those unsettling similarities, I find that the sense of anticipation that young people associate with a new decade is beginning to stir within me now.
Leaving behind the grand schemes of youth, I nevertheless embrace the notion that the new decade will again represent a defining time in my life.
If I am going to have a career as a writer, it will come in the decade. If I am to remain alone, this is the decade in which I will have come to accept it as my lot in life. If I am going to secure my future, it will begin now.
Most importantly, perhaps, is that by the end of the ‘10s, I’ll have made peace with the past; surely by then the wounds – mostly self-inflicted – will be nothing more than scars.
I no longer have dreams of changing the world – even though the world is in no less need of improvement. To tell you the truth, the very idea of changing the world is more than a little unnerving. Who needs that sort of pressure? I guess that’s why it’s a young man’s dream.
All I do know is that it doesn’t take a great degree of optimism for me to believe that the ’10s will be better that the ‘00s. A few of my personal highlights from the decade that has just slipped away: Divorced after a 16-year marriage (2002), lost mama (2004), lost dad (2005), fired from my job as a newspaper columnist (2007), sent to prison for DUI (2007).
A more succinct description: the ‘00s kicked my butt. I will remember it as the decade that I became a Human Timex (“Takes a lickin’, but keeps on tickin’!)
So I enter the decade with the always dangerous point of view that things can’t get any worse, even though I’m looking for love, purpose and fulfillment at an age where most people have had those blessings so long they are almost inclined to take them for granted.
I’m 50 years old, a convicted felon and, for better or worse, a newspaper guy.
Neither prospective mates nor employers rate those qualities very high, I realize.
But I retain just enough Southern-bred stubbornness to believe that the arc of my life can, indeed, swing upward, even though the leading indicators suggest a less agreeable trajectory.
My New Year’s resolution is knock the dust off my britches, stick out my chin and keep dreaming.
So Happy New Year and bring on the ‘10s.
I ain’t done yet.

Hide-and-Seek

When I was in the second grade, I memorized the first 20 verses of the second chapter of Luke and recited it before the class to win a prize. I think the prize was a bunch of Santa Claus pencils and a few pieces of candy. It’s been more than 40 years since that day, so I cannot be expected to remember that detail.
Now, all these years later, I realize that, like so many other things in life, the real prize was what I learned. In fact, to this day, I can recite the 349 words of the passage, although I will confess that I get stuck a few places and have to cheat a little.
One of the things that I’ve always wondered about is how the shepherds found the baby Jesus to begin with. All they were told is, “Ye shall find the child wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.’’
Even though Bethlehem was not a big town, they didn’t really have much to go on. It would be the equivalent of trying to find a single family in a whole subdivision.
Although the account of the Magi is found in Matthew rather than the passage I committed to memory all those long years ago, a similar conundrum arises. According to Matthew, the Magi located the Christ child by following a star, which came to rest above the town of Bethlehem. Again, it seems like pretty vague directions. I cannot imagine you would be able to figure out a specific residence based on the position of a star. It occurs to me that the star of Bethlehem was the first known use of a GPS system, although not a very precise model.
Those curiosities aside, the important fact is that both the shepherds and the Magi found the Christ child.
I think it is interesting to note that, in the accounts of the Nativity, it is just as important to note not only who found the baby Jesus, but who didn’t. That would be Herod, who sought the child with as much zeal as the shepherds or the Magi but with far different motives.
Ever since, people have been looking for him and the success or failure of those efforts, I believe, rests on the intent of the seeker.
This reminds me of when my two kids were little. One of their favorite games to play with Dad was hide-and-seek.
I was always careful to hide in such a way that I could be easily found, of course. Getting “found’’ was the fun part of the game, after all.
So I would hide behind the curtains with my shoes sticking out prominently underneath, maybe rustling the curtains a bit for good measure.
When they found me I would feign shock. “How did you find me?’’ I would ask in mock frustration, and they would laugh and shout and demand that I hide once more so they could find me all over again.
I have a feeling it’s the same way with God. He is easy to find, only because he wants to be found. I am sure His heart bursts with loving affection when his children find him, for the joy it produces.
For those who have sought and found him, Christmas is always a time that we find in our spirits the irrepressible urge to “find him all over again.’’
“Seek and ye shall find,’’ Jesus once said.
So, with the chaos and confusion and the frenzy that generally goes with Christmas, I hope that you will find the opportunity to play the game that fathers love to play with their children.
He’ll be easy to find, of course.
He always has been.
Merry Christmas!

Me & Bobby Bowden

The plaudits that are now pouring in for Bobby Bowden in the wake of Monday’s announcement that he is resigning as the Florida State head coach come from every quarter – from Hall of Fame players and coaches and luminaries of every ilk, many well outside the arena of college football.
It would be the height of arrogance to expect that he would pay any particular attention to my compliments, of course.
But then a memory stirs of my first meeting with the legendary coach and I pause to think that my words of congratulations might indeed carry a weight beyond all proportion to my status.
It was early August of 1989 and the Seminoles were well into preparations for the season when I made arrangements to visit campus to do a story on a freshman player on the Seminoles’ roster.
At that time, I was a sports writer at the Biloxi (Miss.) Sun Herald and had been sent to Tallahassee to do a story on Terrell Buckley, who had been a star player on the Pascagoula High state title team of 1987.
Although Buckley was a prized prospect and would go on to win the Jim Thorpe Award at FSU in a few years, the Seminoles were such a power that little time or attention was wasted on a raw rookie.
Of course, Buckley was still a luminous star in his hometown, which is why I was dispatched to Tallahassee. Florida State was, at that time, just coming into its glory under Bowden. In fact, the ensuing decade would bring two national championships to the school, cementing Bowden’s status as a college football legend.
Mindful of the status of both the FSU program and its famous coach and equally mindful that I was just a small-town newspaper reporter doing a story on a player who wouldn’t sniff the field that season, I was hopeful that I might get two or three minutes of Bowden’s time, perhaps out by the practice field or between meetings. I was nervous. I figured I had better be ready to get the most I could in a small amount of time.
But when I arrived, I was stunned to find myself being ushered into Bowden’s office. There he was, rising up from his big desk and moving quickly toward me, thrusting out his hand and smiling broadly.
“Hello, Hello!’’ he said, pumping my hand as if I were a dear friend he hadn’t seen in ages. “How was your drive over? You thirsty?’’
Before I could answer, he was shouting out to his secretary, “Can you bring Slim here something to drink? What would you like? A Coke? Water? Boy, it’s good to see you! I appreciate you driving over! Here, please sit down!’’
This was not the reception I had anticipated.
After ushering me into a comfortable chair across from his desk, Bowden sank into his big chair, leaned back and asked what he could do for me. He seemed relaxed, like he had all the time in the world and that my arrival was a pleasing respite from his busy day.
I explained the purpose of my visit and Bowden went into another long soliloquy about what a great kid Terrell Buckley was, what a wonderful town Pascagoula was, what great coaching he had, what a wonderful mama he had, etc., etc.
I had hoped for a few minutes. After a half-hour, I began to feel a bit guilty, even though there was nothing in Bowden’s demeanor to suggest that he wouldn’t have been content to talk all afternoon, maybe even delay practice to continue the discussion.
When I rose to leave, he thanked me again for coming. “You let me know if there’s anything else you need for your story, OK? Anything at all. Boy, it was sure good to meet you, Slim! You come back and see us, all right?’’
Monday, when Bowden stepped down after 44 years as a head coach, including 34 seasons at Florida State where he transformed FSU from a joke to a power, I remember that day 20 years ago when he treated a small-town sports writer as if he were the lead columnist for The New York Times.
One need only examine his won-loss record to recognize that Bowden was a great coach.
My testimony is that he was an even better man.
So congratulations, coach Bowden.
And thanks for the hospitality.

From the archives: The Christmas Reindeer

Folks: An old column of mine from December, 2006 that may help get you in the holiday spirit...

How the Grinch stole the reindeer - or one homeowner's decorating ploy

By Slim Smith
Tribune Columnist
This is a Christmas story and the first thing you should know is that the Geyer family of Gilbert - Steve, Renee and their children, Gabriella and Sophia - have all the qualities you would expect to find on a Hallmark greeting card.
They are all good-looking, smart, successful, responsible and, above all else, so very nice.
Last weekend found Steve doing what most everybody in his neighborhood does this time of year: Stringing up Christmas lights. In addition to the lights, Steve has a couple of those lighted metal reindeer that are all the rage these days.
Steve is a contractor and is the meticulous sort, so rest assured that his decorations are hung with precision - no detail escapes his attention.
But there is the matter of what to do with the reindeer, and this is the dramatic focal point of our story.
This is also the point where you realize that the Geyers' lives are not always as idyllic as you might assume. For as Steve considers what to do with the reindeer, he is really engaged in a battle of wills and of wits that has been a part of the family's Christmas for almost three years now.
It began when Steve bought his first reindeer and placed them on his lawn near the front door a few weeks before Christmas 2003.
Steve went to get the newspaper one morning to discover the reindeer lying on their sides near the curb. Someone had tried to steal them, he realized. The thief must have been startled and abandoned the spoils by the sidewalk. Steve gathered up his reindeer, put them back in their spot and left an outside light on to discourage would-be thieves.
So last year as he was putting up his decorations, Steve remembered that close call. He had an idea: He would anchor the reindeer about three inches deep, which would surely prevent them from being stolen.
It seemed to Steve the perfect solution. He was so confident, in fact, that he decided to enhance the display, buying a string of blue lights which he laid near the reindeer's feet to simulate water. It was a nice effect, two reindeer posed by a serene pool.
A week later, Steve, his family and another couple went for a drive to see the Christmas lights in a Gilbert neighborhood noted for extravagant displays. They were only gone for a couple of hours.
When the Geyers pulled into their driveway, it was 3-year-old Sophia who first noticed something amiss.
"Look!'' she gasped.
There in the front lawn was a solitary string of lights, still shining like a blue pool. An abandoned pool, in fact.
For a long moment, no one spoke. It was almost as if Steve was trying to remember a curse word appropriate for the situation.
Finally, 6-year-old Gabriella broke the silence.
"The reindeer ran away 'cause daddy didn't feed them," she said.
And everybody convulsed in a fit of laughter.
Everybody except Steve, who was striding toward the pathetic scene, muttering under his breath as he unplugged that pitiful string of blue lights. Somehow, his demeanor made it all the more funny and for almost a year now his buddies have teased Steve unmercifully.
"Look on the bright side," one quipped. "At least they didn't steal your water."
Someone suggested that this year he rig his new reindeer with enough voltage to give any robber a suitable electrical shock.
But Steve is simply too kind, too gentle to consider that.
So what did he do?
I will not tell you how this story turns out. For who knows? In this battle of wills and wits, this may not be the final chapter.
But if you happen to find yourself driving around Gilbert and see a home where the lights are strung in perfect symmetry, look a little closer and you will see a couple of lighted metal reindeer. . .
On the roof.