So, it appears my seemingly never-ending journalistic career won’t end until I do. Last week I was called to fill in and write something because your regular political columnist, John Clarke, had a heart attack and was in the hospital, which was very sad to hear. Everyone is praying for John and his family.
John was a member of the Augusta Commission, representing Super District 10 from 2018 through 2022, a hail fellow well-met, who succeeded me as Sunday columnist for The Augusta Press when I retired for the umpteenth time a year ago. He was my favorite commissioner, right after the late Commissioner Grady Smith, whose term he completed when Smith died in October 2018. Anytime I needed input on something I was writing about the commission, I would call John. And he never said, “No comment.”
John loved to talk almost as much as Grady, and like Grady, he enlivened any column I wrote with humorous and often startingly frank and honest answers. So, I called them both a lot.
John and I would often talk while I was out in the pasture walking the dogs, and he was very patient when I’d suddenly cut him off to go chase after one of them.
“Now where were we?” I’d ask breathlessly when I called back. “You were telling me how you and your band got fired one time for going on stage and playing the same songs your boss who came on after you had planned to play. You said you did it to make him fire you because you were sick of the gig.”
John had many stories about his days traveling around the country leading a band and singing. He knew the words to all the old songs and had a very beautiful singing voice. He also had lots of funny stories about his years driving an 18-wheeler all over the country. He drove from Miami into New York City every week.
“You actually drove in New York City?” I asked.
“Every week,” he replied.
One time, he let his relief driver get behind the wheel, and when he woke up the other driver had driven the rig deep into an orange grove and didn’t know how to get it out.
He had so many good stories, like stopping at a store in the mountains where they had a bear in a cage. He felt sorry for the bear, and after he and the other driver with him had gone on down the road and checked into a motel, they sneaked back to the store in the dark and opened the bear’s cage.
When I asked him what the bear did, he said he didn’t know.
“We ran away as fast as we could!”
I told him he should write a book about his adventures. He wanted me to write it, but I told him he could write it just like he was telling me, and I would edit it.
I said, “John, a lot of people think they can’t write, but if you can talk, you can write.”
And write he did when he took over my column for TAP. He went everywhere and kept up with everything and kept you up-to-date on things going on in Augusta government.
And I hope he gets better quick and is back here on this page soon.
It was cold everywhere
Last week’s presidential inauguration and the icy weather reminded me of another inauguration in Augusta. On Jan. 4, 1999, Bob Young was sworn in as mayor of Augusta. The temperature was 24 degrees, but unlike last week’s presidential election, Young’s inauguration was outside in what was then the front of the Marble Palace. Bleachers were set up for the public. I was standing in front of then-Augusta Commissioner and owner of Mays Mortuary, Willie Mays. The whole time he was trying to remove the dog hair off my black coat with the adhesive pads they use at funerals to make sure the lapels of the person in the casket are spotless before the viewing.
At the time Ernie and I had two Chow dogs we’d adopted from the Richmond County Animal Shelter after they’d begged me pitifully from their pen to rescue them. I was there doing an expose on the thousands of animals being killed there. Political pressure from those stories forced them to stop using a cruel and inhumane chamber that actually suffocated the animals to death. They’re still killing thousands a year, so I hear, using a needle. I wouldn’t really know because I wouldn’t go near that place for anything. I might come home with another dog.
Anyway, back to the inauguration.
Young opened his speech talking about the weather.
“I don’t have to tell you it’s a cold day in Augusta,” he said. “But then the good ol’ boys said it would be a cold day somewhere else before Bob Young became mayor of Augusta, so we wanted to accommodate them today.”
“Why did you say they said ‘it would be a cold day somewhere else” instead of “a cold day in hell?” I asked Young last week.
“Because there were ladies there,” he replied. “It was a family kind of event.”
Such a gentleman.
Is this a ruse? Or do voters really get to choose?
Not only was it cold in Augusta last week, we had two inches of snow. Everything was shut down like always, starting the day before it actually started snowing until the day after it’s all melted. The Augusta Commission meeting was postponed from Tuesday until Thursday.
Everybody was there except for Brandon Garrett who’s been trying to get his personal life in order for the past two months. Of course, it’s the honeymoon period for the two new commissioners, but I didn’t hear any squabbling. And new commissioners Don Clark and Tina Slendak appear to have raised the level of discourse considerably. Won’t it be wonderful if it lasts?
During the meeting, commissioners voted to hold three public hearings on this shell game piece of legislation called HB 581 which supposedly, allegedly, should save homeowners with homestead exemption money on their property taxes. Or at least shield them from drastic increases from one year to the next. Richmond County voters approved it by 62%. And in doing so, they also approved a provision lower in the bill that probably only a half-dozen people read that gives local governing boards the authority to opt out of the legislation and continue doing what they’re doing now if they believe implementing the voters’ decision will cost the government too much money. If that happened businesses would be taxed more to help make up the difference which is the reason Chambers of Commerce want to opt out of HB 581.
I’m sure I haven’t explained that exactly right, but I did as good a job as the city professionals tried to do at Thursday’s meeting. If they don’t have some charts and graphs and good explanations at the “opt out” public meetings, people could go away as confused as I was. Am.
Yeah, yeah, I’m rusty, but still….
Meanwhile, The Augusta Press Staff Writer Susan McCord did a remarkable job of explaining the purpose of the bill in Friday’s paper, so read that if you want to know more.
The Biden grime family vacation
Act Three: An American Tragedy
(Former President Joe Biden and former First Lady Jill Biden are aboard the helicopter just having lifted off from the U.S. Capitol and President Donald Trump’s inauguration to Base Andrews where they will board a plane to take them and other Biden family members to the scenic wine region of Santa Ynez, California.)
Joe: (Looking out the window and waving goodbye) Whew! Thank God that’s over!
Jill: Yes, thank God. If I’d had to sit there and listen to that braying jackass, Donald Trump, insulting us to our faces one more minute I’d have started screaming.
Joe: It wasn’t to our faces. We were sitting behind him.
Jill: It wouldn’t have mattered where we were sitting. He’d have said the same things about the Border and blaming you for all the criminal illegals flooding into the country.
Joe: That’s a fact. But they weren’t all criminals. Some were farm workers and hotel maids. And, by the way, the Stock Market is up, unemployment is down, as are interest rates, but nobody seems to notice or care. Was I dreaming all that or calling the shots?.
Jill: If they did notice, they’re calling it the Trump Effect. And Joe, you haven’t been calling the shots since your inauguration. First it was Fauci and his damned masks and vaccinations. Then it was the stupid Secretary of Defense and Gen. Milley and the rest of those fools who caused the disaster by pulling out of Afghanistan and getting those 13 soldiers killed. And leaving all those planes and artillery behind. Everybody blamed that on you when you didn’t have a thing to do with it. You slept through it all.
Joe: It was like a bad dream.
Jill: What I don’t understand is why you didn’t close the Border, Joe. I told you to do it over and over.
Joe: That was Kamala’s job. I made her Border Czar. I thought she had closed the damned thing until Trump started talking about it all the time. Besides, I thought most of the people coming in were going to become good Democrats. We’d count them as Democrats for voting purposes anyway.
Jill: I don’t guess you remember selling off the steel from Trump’s first Border wall either, do you?
Joe: No
Jill: Well, you got blamed for it. By the way, whose idea was it to sell it?
Joe: I don’t remember. It might have been Anthony Blinken, Jack Smith or maybe Obama. Fauci might have been in on it too.
Jill: What about Nancy?
Joe: Nancy who?
Jill. Pelosi, Joe! Nancy Pelosi!
Joe: No. Nancy didn’t try to sell off the steel. She just put six inches of it in my back. She and Schumer and Obama and that damned Hollywood actor who wrote that letter about me after the debate. They made me drop out. And I could have beaten Trump like a drum. Anybody could have one bad debate
Jill: (Standing) We’re here. I’ll be glad to get out of this noisy helicopter. Look, there’s Hunter. Poor Hunter. He lost 25 of his best paintings in the fire.
(No doubt the art world breathed a sigh of relief upon hearing that.)
Joe: Where are we going?
Jill: To California. Did you forget that too? We’re all going. Hunter and the grandchildren. Your brother James and his family. They never have to worry about a thing since you made him a multi-millionaire too.
Joe: Yeah, Yeah. I do sort of remember it now. And since I granted last-minute pardons to everybody, we can all relax and not have to worry about going to jail.
Jill: Do you know what I’m most relieved about?
Joe: No. What? Did I forget to pardon you?
Jill: No. I didn’t need one. But you do.
Joe: Did I forget to pardon myself?
Jill: Don’t worry. If they subpoenaed you to testify about something, you wouldn’t remember anything. Anyway, I am so glad you’re not going to be in the basement tossing that nuclear football around for hours on end.
Joe: (Sighs) That’s one thing I’m really going to miss. I really am. It was the only thing I liked about being president. That football.
The End
