Tag: Gary Lloyd

Books available at free author event in Bessemer

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I’m signed up for another author event, and it’s free.

I’ll be at the third annual Bessemer Public Library Local Author Extravaganza on Saturday, August 19 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. The event is free to attend for the general public.

Thirty authors will be on hand selling and promoting their books.

I’ll bring copies of Heart of the Plate ($15), Deep Green ($15) and Trussville, Alabama: A Brief History ($10).

The library is located at 400 19th Street North, Bessemer, AL 35020.

Come say hello and buy some books!

Today’s news

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Today, I want to share some real news with you.

You’ve been hearing all about fake news. Your social media outlets have been inundated with clickbait.

Just today, April 10, 2017, you’ve endured a lot on your timelines. 

A murder-suicide inside an elementary school in San Bernardino, California, where two students were caught in the crossfire.

Russia allegedly having advanced knowledge of the Syrian chemical attack on its own citizens last week.

ISIS claiming responsibility for the Palm Sunday church bombings in Egypt.

A cell phone video of a man being dragged, screaming, from a United Airlines flight because it was overbooked. The airline’s CEO released a statement, saying he apologizes for having to “re-accommodate these customers.” 

And most of you reading this, what fills your airwaves today is your state’s governor finding himself in the middle of impeachment hearings, the text messages and documents released in the last few days as crude and abhorrent as anything we’ve seen — even for Alabama politics.

You see all of that. It’s everywhere. I want to tell you a quick story about something you won’t see on FOX News or CNN or hear on the radio.

It happened Saturday morning. My wife and I stopped at Bojangles, just over a mile from our house. She ordered the Cheddar Bo Biscuit, while I opted for a chicken biscuit. We both chose large drinks. The total was ten dollars.

When we curved around the building and reached the drive-thru window, we were told that our breakfast had been paid for by the vehicle in front of us. It had already left the restaurant. So, we paid for the breakfast for the people behind us. It was a dad buying his son a Bo-Berry Biscuit before heading to Saturday’s Little League baseball games.

He pulled up beside us, as we were still waiting on our food, rolled his window down, and thanked us. His son, younger than ten years old, smiled at us.

I read about these occurrences all the time on Facebook. It happens at Chick-fil-A, Bojangles, Jack’s, elsewhere. It’s always so fun and refreshing to read about. 

That’s real news today. So pay it forward.

Augusta

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Have you ever been teased with something to the point you could cry? The perfect house is fifty thousand dollars over your budget. Your favorite college football team loses the national championship game on the final play. The McRib makes its comeback the week after you started a fierce diet.

We’ve all been there. My biggest tease was a golf course. Not just any old acreage of grass, but Augusta National in eastern Georgia, home of The Masters, the best golf tournament the sport has to offer. Let me explain.

The tournament is always in April. To attend, whether it be one of four rounds, a practice round or par 3 contest, you must sign up online to enter a ticket lottery. Winners of tickets are selected at random. You will refresh your email for the results like a lunatic, believe me. In 2014, a friend of ours won tickets to the Monday practice round. He, another friend, my dad and I made the trip. We stayed in a small hotel about an hour outside of Augusta, and the aroma of a nearby Waffle House hung thick in the air. We gave in and went around nine-thirty that night.

The next morning, it was foggy, with rain in the forecast. We toted umbrellas and pullovers and prayers for the rain to hold off. It didn’t. We strolled parts of the most beautiful golf course in the world for fewer than two hours. The practice round was canceled really before it got started. Major bummer. Just setting foot on the muddy grounds was more than most golf fans get in a lifetime. We were appreciative.

Then, a miracle. Everyone who came that day got rain checks. We were allowed to come back in 2015. We had a year to speak with the golf gods, to plead for pleasant weather. April finally came and we drove Interstate 20 across the state line, past Atlanta and on to Augusta. No rain. We wanted to see it all.

Television does not do Augusta justice, no matter your TV’s size or 1080p resolution. The grounds are hilly and spacious. The fairways are so pristine that you feel as if walking on them is a felony. Early in our tour, we had our picture taken in front of Hole No. 13’s green, encircled by bright pink and purple flowers. The hole’s name is, fittingly, Azalea. We watched Tiger Woods tee off on a long hole called Yellow Jasmine, stood in a long line to have our photo taken on Magnolia Lane, saw Titleist ProV1s clear Rae’s Creek on No. 12, walked every square inch of the place that we could, ate pimiento cheese sandwiches for a dollar-fifty. 

I watched the eventual tournament winner, Jordan Spieth, send golf balls airborne on the driving range. I stood close to Graeme McDowell, who played at the University of Alabama-Birmingham, as he putted on the practice green. I said hello to Tom Rinaldi, who tells tear-jerkers for ESPN. 

You don’t have to appreciate golf to have a blast at Augusta. It is heaven on earth, even if it rains. The merchandise store has more stuff for sale than a Sam’s Club, and the food is always cheap. 

I’ve passed through the gates at Augusta National twice, and will most likely never win the ticket lottery. Every time I’ve tried, I have eventually received the “We’re sorry” reply. 

But you can bet I will sign up every year for the rest of my life.

Reruns

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The list of television channels continues to grow deeper, but the content is shallower.

I was scrolling the guide the other day, and I came across a whole lot of rubbish. There were hours of episodes about gossiping housewives in Beverly Hills. There were even more about this Kardashian family, a group of people I will never understand, or care to. I saw a commercial about this drama series following FBI trainees, and every one of them looked like a model. Yeah, that’s real life. The next day, I saw a short commercial about a show awarding a hundred thousand dollars to who could dress best in drag.

Really? This is what television is today? Let me tell you what I miss on TV. Many of the following still come on, though their time slots are either before the sun rises or while you’re at work.

I miss Tim “The Tool Man” Taylor listening to and hilariously explaining Wilson’s sage advice. I miss a nervous Kevin Arnold dropping the football in the pilot episode of “The Wonder Years,” the twelve-year-old constantly fixated on his crush, Winnie Cooper. I miss the sitcom all about a teenager in west Philadelphia born and raised, on the playground is where he spent most of his days.

I miss a tired police officer in Chicago, Carl Winslow, trying to shut a nerdy neighbor, Steve Urkel, out of his house. I miss a group of Bayside High students, three boys and three girls, hanging out at The Max, eating burgers and fries. I especially miss Alan Matthews allowing his youngest son, Cory, to stay up late on a school night to witness a no-hitter, a rarity in baseball; Mr. Feeny teaching lifelong lessons at John Adams High and from his backyard; and Cory shoving a perverse college professor through a glass door for hitting on Topanga.

Man, those shows were the best. I came across one on the Hallmark channel last week, one on MTV and another on Netflix. So they’re still out there, thank goodness, and I hope more people rediscover them. We could all use the lessons, the positive messages, the soft storylines. As I watched Tim glue his head to a board and dye his hands lime green on “Home Improvement,” I thought of yet another show I miss, “Full House,” and I hummed the applicable first stanza of its theme song.

“Whatever happened to predictability,

The milk man, the paper boy, evening T.V.?,

You miss your old familiar friends,

Waiting just around the bend.”

Catching more flies with sugar than salt

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He used to be obsessed with winning, at least early on in his career as a cross country and track and field coach. But he has been at the same Alabama high school since George H.W. Bush was in the White House, and now that he is on the backside of a successful career, he coaches differently than he did back then.

As a coach of runners, his job is more about inspiration than technique. 

“I have to play more psychologist than I do coach,” he says.

He has had his fair share of runners win state championships and break records. An overflowing trophy case proves that. But he knows that is not all being a coach is about. He points to structure and consistency as key traits in his profession. He has worn the same uniform for twenty-seven years. He says that will never change. Every Monday in cross country his runners take on the hills that peak throughout the city. Every Tuesday they run the track. Every Wednesday is a run through the “wilderness.” Every Thursday is catchup day, and every Friday is pre-race day, followed by the race on Saturday. Every first Monday after July Fourth is time trials on the same course it has been on since 1993. 

“Everything is structured,” he says. “Nothing has changed.”

During the summer of 2016, the coach was following his runners around in a golf cart, since he no longer runs with them. He circled around and found his wife standing with a man. She asked her husband if he remembered the man. It turned out to be someone who ran for him in the early 1990s. The man had heard that his former coach was still coaching and decided to come see him. He knew exactly where to find him.

“It’s funny because he was like, ‘You’ve been here so long,’” he says.

The reunion triggers in the coach’s memory when he was first hired, by the school’s head football coach, in 1990. The coach promised his boss that he would retire from the school, that he would not jump ship.

“I think it shocks a lot of people,” he says. “That is consistency.”

That was his goal all along, to build up a program and retire from that program. He has kept his promise, and it has helped to forge strong relationships that have lasted much longer than just four years of high school. His house, the same one he moved to in 1987, remains open for student-athletes both still in high school and long since graduated, to come by to just chat or share real concerns. His house phone number, which is still printed in those ancient phone books, remains the same as it was in 1987. The stadium at which his teams practiced was open from the late 1940s until 2015, when due to its old age was demolished to make way for a new stadium a few miles away. Kids would often drive by that stadium, reach their arms out their car windows and call out to the coach. They knew he would be there.

“I think that has something to be said for kids today in society because people change jobs, people change houses, people change careers, people change where they go to school, but there is something to be said about consistency,” he says.

He says he is sure people gripe about consistency equating to boredom, but he believes that deep down, most people like consistency, like knowing that mom will be home at 5:30 to cook dinner. 

“And I think when it comes down to that, there needs to be more of this,” he says.

The coach missed four days in 2015 after his mom died. That week, people remarked at how weird it was for him not to be in his office and at practice.

“If I’m not here, something big has happened,” he says. “I think that structure means a lot. I think that consistency means a lot.”

He is also consistent in the manner in which he advises his runners. They come to him and tell him they want to run fast. Coach, in return, asks them how fast they want to go. They reveal their goal, and he then preaches. He asks them to listen to him, to trust him, to do what he says. He tells them they will have to work hard.

“There is no day off in success,” he says.

He has examples of this. One former runner who graduated in 1997 recently mentioned the coach in a Facebook comment. The point was about how an incredibly successful college football coach demands that his players work toward their goals, even on tough days. The coach had pushed that runner, and he remembered it. 

Another runner came to him his freshman year and said he wanted to be great. Coach advised him to run everywhere he went. The runner suffered and made small changes along the way, and Coach kept pushing him. By the end of his senior year, he had broken the indoor state record by seventeen seconds in the two-mile run and by eighteen seconds in the outdoor two-mile run. The runner earned a full-ride scholarship to a four-year university. Once that success came, the runner began reading about certain workouts and formulas to get better. Coach had to rein him back in.

“Don’t change what got you here,” he told him. “This is what got you here. Don’t change it.” 

Another former runner once told Coach that he could read ten books with ten different philosophies on how to run fast. That runner told his former coach that there is no secret formula, that he had learned that when the gun goes off, only one person will win the race. Coach remembers that, and advises his student-athletes that if they want to run fast, they must train fast. They get out of it what they put into it, he tells them.

Most recently, a young runner approached him with the statement he seems to hear all the time: “I want to go fast.” Coach again asked the runner for his goal, how fast he wanted to go. He then counseled the runner on what it would take to get him there.

More often than not, the runner buys in to Coach’s reasons. It is a large explanation for why the high school has a successful cross country and track and field program. But the reason behind that buying in starts with Coach’s approachability, something he has worked toward through structure and consistency since promising his first boss that he would retire from the high school. Something his grandmother used to say seems to apply perfectly to his philosophy.

“You catch more flies with sugar than you do with salt.”

A peaceful getaway

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It is easy to navigate your way to the height of the Smoky Mountains, in Gatlinburg, Tennessee.

But the foothills, maybe the best place for a getaway, lie in Ellijay, Georgia. Ellijay is an hour and a half north of Atlanta, about the same distance to the south of Chattanooga, Tennessee. If you blink, you could miss it.

My wife and I made a quick three-day getaway to Ellijay in the fall of 2016. I had never heard of the place, and I sort of liked that. Sometimes the best places to visit are the ones where you have to search, and search hard, for the place you’re staying in.

That’s what we had to do. It was the sort of trip that a GPS was good for getting you halfway there. It got us to Atlanta and through Canton. Then, the directions we had received from the cabin rental staff took over. The directions advised to continue through Jasper to Ellijay, proceed to the third traffic light at the Hardee’s intersection, and turn left. I love directions that utilize landmarks.

We then made turns on Industrial Boulevard and Main Street and a couple Georgia highways before reaching the gatehouse that acted as the check-in area. From the gate, we were to stay on the paved road for two and a half miles, and were instructed to clock our mileage. We crossed two bridges and veered right at a “Canoe Park” sign. Again, perfect directions.

Our cabin was a dream. There was a wraparound porch that included cushioned chairs and a fireplace with a teal “Relax” sign pinned to it. There was a hot tub and a fenced-in yard for our dog, Sonny, to roam in. There was a gas grill, and an American flag hanging over the front porch. 

We did a whole lot of nothing on this trip, and it was bliss. We walked to a nearby river several times a day, casting purple Zoom worms into shallow water that never seemed to flow. We didn’t catch a thing in three days, but many times fishing is not about the end result. We took Sonny hiking, and at night he snored in front of the fireplace. We peered through the living room and kitchen windows to see deer bounding through the pines, and strutting up the paved road. Near our cabin, we saw more deer in three days than humans.

At night, we played card games and tested our knowledge with a trivia game about the television series “Friends.” We watched Christmas movies, as is tradition in November and December, and I introduced Jessica to the awesomeness that is the Indiana Jones trilogy from the 1980s.

We heard just about nothing. The notable sounds I remember from this trip are the occasional rumble of a vacationer passing over a rusty iron bridge, Sonny’s collar tag jingling as he shook off river water, and the fishing line peeling out of the reel of a Zebco 33.

We took photos that should be featured on postcards, from deer crossing the street to green-headed mallards easing down the river. I snapped a shot of Jessica and Sonny standing on the muddy bank of that river. Jessica is in her boots and a blue long-sleeve Florida Gators shirt, and Sonny is actually looking at the camera. You can see trees leaning over the river, and the multicolored leaves swept along the ridge. I can’t believe I was so lucky to get that photo. It’s my favorite. 

We had to come home from Ellijay just when we had decided that cabin should be our forever home, away from car payments, career disappointments and an ugly world that I fear has lost much of its beauty.

For now, at least, when I’m having a bad day, all I have to do to smile is pull out my iPhone and look at my new background photo.

Typical disturbances not in store

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I wrote about this shopping center quite a few times. It was never about a new store opening, or a door-buster sale.

It was always about crimes and disturbances. 

There was the possible flash mob in the summer of 2011. There was the alleged shoplifter in 2013 who fled from loss prevention authorities and struck an elderly man with his vehicle. 

The last quarter of 2014 was full. In October, I wrote about two alleged purse-snatchers at this shopping center. Their M.O. was simple: One suspect would approach the women, loading purchased items into their vehicles, and he would say “Hello.” He would then snatch the purse and jump into a SUV that fled. 

The next month, I wrote about shoplifters who crashed into two police cars during their attempt to flee the scene. The driver was caught after the wreck, while the passenger ran but was later apprehended. A responding police officer broke a finger in that ordeal. Luckily, I had the opportunity to also write about the suspects’ arrests.

After I left the daily journalism world, I often read about this shopping center. There was a weekday bomb threat at its anchor store in 2015. The store was evacuated. A year later, there was another bomb threat. 

In December 2015, I read again about a shoplifter who fled, made it not even a mile, and wrecked into another vehicle. I read about police having to respond to a large group of loiterers on Christmas night in 2016. This January, I read about two people being arrested for disorderly conduct, and another person with a gun.

These stories make me uneasy. My mom shops there, as does my mother-in-law. Friends shop there. I’m thankful for police presence, but my Lord, it shouldn’t be that much of a necessity. 

Today I went to this shopping center to eat lunch with my brother. I have become accustomed to seeing the red and blue lights here, the suspicious people strutting between the cars in the dark. Not today. Today was different. As I made the right turn into the shopping center, I saw a handful of people holding large white signs. 

Great, I thought. I have seen photos and videos from the political protests across the nation. I was in Atlanta recently and observed about a hundred people marching in support of Obamacare. I assumed this would be something similar. We are conditioned to believe it is always a protest, these days.

I was dead wrong.

I’m not sure who they were, a family or members of some church group. But printed on their signs in red were “Stop For Prayer” and “Jesus Cares.”

I just hope those past stories, of fleeing thieves and hoax bomb threats, didn’t scare people away and keep them from seeing this today. 

A bond beyond baseball

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The baseball coach felt as if the pastor was talking directly to him. Sure, there was a congregation full of people, but the message was so pointed, so personal, that it felt like a one-on-one conversation. 

The sermon was about stepping outside of your comfort zone. The coach had always talked to his high school players about doing the right thing, about what he wanted them to do. He did the same when he was the coach at his previous job. He had never really shown them. 

“Baseball is just kind of an avenue for us,” he says.

When the church service was over and he went outside, he told his wife that he wanted to start a Bible study in their home with any player who wanted to come. He then called a friend, who had been a youth pastor at one time. He was all in to help. The next morning, the coach was preparing to tell his players of his new idea when one knocked on his door. He asked his coach if he would be OK with the players starting a Bible study in the locker room. He told the player that he would not believe what happened the day before.

“It was like God’s way of saying, ‘This is what you should do,’” he says.

The Bible study started the following Sunday. It was not mandatory, and players were told that it would not affect playing time. It was totally separate from baseball. The coach figured on maybe a handful of players showing up. Fifteen of the eighteen on the roster came. Those numbers remained steady. Every Sunday during the baseball season, the players met at their head coach’s home for food, Bible study and fellowship. Sometimes, the studies lasted fifteen minutes. Sometimes, they lasted an hour. Afterward, they would watch the Sunday Night Baseball game on ESPN or play Wii. Players learned a lot about each other. They opened up about family, girlfriends, choices, college. They grew closer.

“It was an unbelievable time of team bonding away from baseball,” he says.

The coach’s favorite memory from those Bible studies was a player who was selected in the Major League Baseball draft. He decided to instead play football and baseball at an Alabama university. That player came back to his old stomping grounds one Friday night for a football game. The coach stood with him on the sidelines. He asked if he missed the Friday night lights. The player said that he really didn’t. The coach was floored. How could an athlete not miss high school sports? The one thing the player said he missed were those Bible studies.

“It just humbled me,” he says.

The coach has continued the Bible studies since becoming the head baseball coach at his third high school. After one of the studies, one of the boys called the coach thirty minutes after everyone left his home. He wanted to come back. They sat on his back porch for two hours, just talking. Without the Bible study, that relationship may have never deepened. 

“I think it’s more than a Bible study,” he says. “It brings kids closer together. To me, that’s the special part. And that’s the important stuff. We are giving them an avenue to talk to us.”

The Bible studies happen during the baseball season, though on some occasions they have begun in December because the kids wanted to start them earlier. The coach says the importance varies from kid to kid, from team to team. Each one has a different personality.

“I just think we’ve seen some kids grow closer together,” he says.

The coach led his current team to its first baseball state championship not long ago. He will not go so far as to say the Bible study was why the team won it all, but it was clearly a factor. That team, he says, just had something different about it. They were close. During the playoff run, at Bible studies on Sundays, baseball was not even a topic of conversation. 

“We love it,” he says.

At a football game about five months after winning that state championship, the baseball team returned for the ring ceremony. There were four seniors on that team, and they had all started college at three different institutions. This was their first time being back together since graduating. The coach watched as they sat at their own table in the stadium’s press box, just sharing their experiences as college freshmen. It took the coach and his wife back to when they originally started the Bible study. 

The coach gestured toward the group and said to his wife, “Look how special that is.”

Departing with my longtime truck

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For the first few weeks I lived in Mississippi, I drove a Honda Accord. It was a great car, a crimson-magenta exterior and black leather inside. I was often surprised at how fast it could go. 

But it was a car. And being a man with a car in Mississippi must be a lot like being a woman in New York without Louis Vuitton. You just don’t feel like you fit in.

At some point in the summer of 2010, my dad got a new truck, which, to me, meant one thing — I’m getting the Tacoma. It was sleek silver, had four doors, a hardcover top and a couple of those Toyota Racing Development Off Road stickers. It had running boards, a V-6 engine and a six-disc changer.

And now it was mine. 

The first morning I drove it to work in Mississippi, my co-workers, all women, complimented it. They asked if it was mine, and called it beautiful. I probably goofily grinned.

In Mississippi, I drove it to football games on Friday nights, to Wal-Mart for groceries, and even tailed fire trucks and ambulances to house fires and car crashes.

When I moved back to Alabama, I did the same, steering it to wherever there was news. I navigated a residential area of south Trussville, where cops were searching for an attempted murderer, a career criminal who had beaten a police officer and stolen his car. I conducted phone interviews from the truck’s front seat, recording many people who laughed, and some who cried. I waited in the truck for city council meetings, school board retreats, football games and Habitat for Humanity key ceremonies. 

In March 2012, I nervously waited in the truck for a girl to show up at a spring carnival for our first date. We had fun, popping balloons with darts and riding a stomach-churner called Moby Dick. We saw a movie after the carnival, and she even rode to the theater with me in the truck.

Later that year, just before Christmas, that girl, who had become my fiance, and I were in a wreck in downtown Birmingham. Some knucklehead from California without insurance, driving his brother-in-law’s vehicle, turned left across a busy intersection. I tried to veer hard to the right, to avoid hitting the man, but we collided. It spun him all the way around. No people were injured, thank goodness, but my truck’s front apron had to be re-weld, among other repairs to the front fender. I drove my granddad’s Army-green Nissan truck for a week, and I missed the Tacoma every day.

Other than the one accident, the Tacoma has never been in a crash. It has never been stopped for rolling through a stop sign, or going too fast on the interstate. For the longest time, the interior smelled of Bobs Sweet Stripes Soft Peppermints, which I kept a stash of in the console’s cup holders. 

It has inched its way down icy roads, pulled onto the shoulder during rainstorms and had the fuel door cover protecting the gas cap filled with shaving cream by mischievous groomsmen. 

The Tacoma has seen many places in its more than 120,000 miles. It has seen the green mountains of Gatlinburg, Tennessee, and Ellijay, Georgia. It has seen Escambia Bay in Florida and a lakefront home in Andalusia, Alabama. It has carried friends through the drive-thru at Krispy Kreme late on a Friday night, a shotgun-riding dog to the baseball park, furniture from one house to another to another, boxes of new books to signing events, and an old chest freezer full of okra up Interstate 65.

The Tacoma has also heard many different things. Its speakers have blared an assortment of musical genres. There has been a rock band shouting about all the small things, a rapper hilariously rhyming about how the FCC won’t let him be, and a country star singing about how a girl leans the seat back, steals his ball cap and pulls it down over her blue eyes.

I have had this truck for almost seven years of its eleven-year life, and it is starting to show its age. It seems to need more and more TLC. It has needed more brake repairs, new struts and an air conditioner compressor. We have put hundreds and hundreds of dollars into this truck, and now has come the time to sell it and move on to something new. We got a pretty good deal through a used-car retailer, and we will be moving on to a mid-size SUV. 

Recently, I was driving the truck for one of the last times. I was listening to Kip Moore’s debut album when the third track on the CD began to play. The final line of the song seemed appropriate.

“Ain’t nothin’ ‘bout it luck, there’s somethin’ ‘bout a truck.”

Letters

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I’ve seen more flowers today than when I visit the Birmingham Botanical Gardens in April.

I’ve seen red roses resting atop security desks in Hoover, and being toted to various offices. I’ve seen pink carnations riding shotgun in a delivery van in Moody. I’ve seen the gravel parking lot of a flower shop near our home overrun with vehicles, all driven by men. I imagine that, by now, they have run out at Publix and Wal-Mart.

I’ve had to walk past a box of Shari’s Berries the size of a baseball field’s base. I’ve heard the rustle of Ghirardelli packages being opened.

Flowers and chocolate seem to be the crown jewels of love stories, but I want to tell you one about letters.

This short story has nothing to do with Valentine’s Day. In fact, this story, every bit of it true, occurred in May. 

There was this young couple, dating for just a few months. On May 31, the man in the relationship decided that he loved the woman, and he penned her a page-long note in bright red ink. That man struggled to verbalize his feelings, so he chose to write them down and hand it to her. For the first time, he told her that he loved her. She said the same.

The following year, the couple was married. He wrote her another letter, and she read it just prior to the wedding ceremony. She had penned one for him, too, and he read it under a tree not far from the chapel. The woman eloquently wrote about trust, protecting each other’s hearts, encouragement and unconditional love.

There are a couple hundred words included in this letter, but eight of them stand out: “By the way, did you notice the date?”

In the top right corner was the date the woman had written the note. It was May 31. 

The man and woman had written each other letters May 31, announcing their feelings, making predictions about their future. They were completely unaware that the other was doing the same. 

I suppose you call that fate.