One year. One year has passed since I held my mother’s hand as she breathed her last. The pain of her sudden and unexpected passing has not lessened; it just is painful less often. On what would have been her 75th birthday last June I posted “don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.” I can assure you the grief has been overwhelming this week and on the one year anniversary I want to smile again. So I wrote this post about some of my favorite Honey memories and qualities. She is, after all, the originator of Not My Boys, at least the term of art and concept as described in our very first post. This post is not meant to be all-encompassing and it certainly won’t do her justice, but she would still appreciate the effort. Although, she loved the Lewis Grizzard line “damn brother, I don’t believe I woulda told that” so there are some stories that will die with those that currently know them.
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I love that there was a boy from Easley who was brought to Greenville in the early 1960s to see a dentist. I love that the dentist was my grandfather.
I love that when that boy became a man, he took a call from his dentist, my father. A call inquiring if there were any jobs available at IPTAY for a skinny freshman boy who loved Clemson and was searching for where he would fit in on a large campus.
It's 10:45am on an overcast Saturday morning in February. A spiral notepad slides across the passenger seat as I steer my truck left onto Laurens Road. The nervous energy of third grade girls playoff basketball has been replaced this morning with the nervous excitement of my first solo Not My Boys research assignment. I am on the search to unlock one of tax season's greatest mysteries...what do the dancing human billboards have on their music playlists? Yes, you read that right. I am en route to interview the people who stand in front of the tax service offices holding signs dressed in some form of costume.
Neighbors started to gather. "What is it?" one asked as I ripped off the shrink wrap. "It's an award, a major award," I screamed. The crowd grew bigger; you could hear them whispering, "He won that...it's a major award." There she was in all her glory...A Big Green Egg.
Ok, so maybe the story didn't happen exactly like that, but my story does feel a lot like the Christmas classic, A Christmas Story. My "major award" can be traced back to a football tailgate in October. It was like any other tailgate...football being over-analyzed, world problems being solved, Jack throwing a football up in a tree, when out of nowhere a good friend asked what I thought at the time was a life-changing question. "Do you need a Green Egg?" Need is such a strong word. Immediately a voice (that oddly sounded just like my wife's voice) began screaming...you already have an offset smoker that requires you to spend all day outside cooking, where are you going to put the Egg, how many different tools does one person need to smoke meat, why can't you just go to Henry's BBQ like everyone else? As this voice was still screaming in my head, I calmly responded, "Yes...Yes, I NEED a Green Egg." As part of the exploding Not My Boys empire, we are casting our net far and wide in search of the best content for our demanding readership. And by far and wide I mean to Easley. And by demanding readership I mean Brandt, who won’t let me quit.
That’s right, this evening my family loaded up and headed west on Highway 123 (same direction as driving to Death Valley! passed by the old Diamonds all nude strip club, now a church!) to the Greenville-Pickens Speedway to see the Christmas light show. Now, if you are thinking to yourself, “Wow, Reid, I did not know that the Greenville-Pickens Speedway had a Christmas light show”, well, that makes two of us. Now, there are other holiday options, such as the Roper Mountain Holiday Lights in Greenville (put on by the Rotary Club helmed by the dynamic Stephanie), Tiny Town in Easley, and TNT in Mauldin, but do any of those boast the ability to drive the wrong direction on a racetrack? |
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November 2022
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