Tag: Georgia

A bit about ‘Heart of the Plate’

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My third book, Heart of the Plate, is one that I wrote rather quickly.

Some may think that it is not of a certain quality, since I wrote it in about four months and had it published five months after the release of Deep Green. That’s for others who read it to judge and not me.

But I will say this: It is a fictional story I had in my mind for a long time, a story of redemption that I wanted to tell. I wrote pages and pages each day because I believed in the story and its message. It’s more than just baseball. It has addiction and overcoming, love lost and love rekindled, heartbreak and uplifting moments. It has something for everyone, and I hope you order a copy and let me know what you think.

Jeff Wright is at the pinnacle of his Major League Baseball career, earning his way into his first All-Star Game. Not long after, Jeff suffers a gruesome, career-ending injury and ventures down a path of self-destruction, and becomes addicted to painkillers. He is arrested for drug possession. Upon completing a stint in a rehabilitation center, Jeff returns to his hometown of Lewis Rock, Georgia, where he discovers that the town’s largest job source, Reynolds Manufacturing, is being sold off and will leave hundreds jobless. He also attempts to rekindle a love that he lost years ago. What begins as mandatory community service for Jeff’s arrest quickly becomes his saving grace. Follow along as Jeff helps his hometown through a difficult time the only way he knows how — through baseball.

The book earned praise from former Major League Baseball players Wes Helms, Matt Guerrier, and Jason Standridge, as well as former college softball head coach Karen Johns.

Buy Heart of the Plate

Read an interview about Heart of the Plate

Some positive news from Atlanta

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I went to Atlanta this weekend, and if you perused the Georgia headlines, you would have seen this:

A Gainesville, Ga., man was charged with molesting an eleven-year-old girl. 

A man was shot outside of a Krispy Kreme.

A middle school student brought a gun to school and showed it to classmates. 

A man fired a shot into the air after a disagreement with his Uber driver. 

You see these headlines daily. You see them everywhere, in Georgia and California and Europe and Alabama and Canada and everywhere else. It’s maddening. But this isn’t one of those posts. This isn’t a cry for gun control or stiffer penalties for criminals. No, this is a post about, dare I say, some positive things I saw in Georgia this weekend, and they all happened Saturday.

As a group of four of us walked around downtown Saturday afternoon, we encountered a woman who was shouting at no one in particular in a courtyard. I grew concerned as we passed her. As it turns out, she was shouting about despite her circumstances, whatever they are, no one will take her peace and joy in life, no matter what. 

We stopped off for some caffeine at a Burger King, and then proceeded toward Underground Atlanta, which has closed its stores for now to renovate and construct new mixed-use developments. We approached a crosswalk, where I heard a man yelling around the corner. Imagine you’re in downtown Atlanta and you hear commotion nearby. What is your first thought?

What we saw was surprising and refreshing. A group of about ten men had gathered on that corner, and one of them was doing all the talking. Men held tattered Bibles and nodded their heads as the one man preached.  

We took an Uber that night, a day after one man fired a shot into the air after a dispute with his driver. I sat up front with our driver, who we read in a review was a good conversationalist. He was silent, and I couldn’t stand it. I asked him if he liked his job, and he said that after just a few months, he really enjoys it. I learned that he lived in Texas for 12 years, Tampa Bay for 10, and has been in Atlanta for five.

He had worked in the grocery business, and he was never off work.

“It was too much,” he said.

With Uber, he picks the times he likes to work. He’s his own boss. He typically works from 4 p.m. or 5 p.m. until after midnight, so that he can get his two boys ready for school in the mornings and pick them up in the afternoons. 

It was an expensive ride for us, considering it was on a Saturday in downtown Atlanta, but I’m glad he was our driver. 

We attended a concert that night, and the main act was not my kind of music. It rattled the walls and shook the blood in my veins. My brother’s ears were ringing two days later. I couldn’t understand almost all the lyrics. But the group’s most popular song ended with these lyrics:

“Hope for the hopeless, a light in the darkness,
Hope for the hopeless, a light in the dark,
We stand for the faithless and the broken,
Hope for the hopeless, a light in the dark.”
 

‘I have fought a long fight’

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I can count the number of concerts I have attended on one hand.

In high school, I saw P.O.D. in downtown Birmingham with a few friends.

There was the time last year when Colt Ford, Justin Moore and Brantley Gilbert came to Birmingham one warm night. There was the time Morgan Wallen, Nelly, Chris Lane and Florida Georgia Line shared the stage on a cold night at the Oak Mountain Amphitheatre. 

But this week, I tried something different. My wife and I went to Iron City in downtown Birmingham, a venue that fills up an hour before the opening act takes the stage. We went to see Walker McGuire and Kane Brown.

We stood in a line that wrapped around two buildings, among teenage girls with Kane Brown photos used as their iPhone wallpapers, with twenty-somethings who could have used perhaps six more inches of material on their dresses. 

Inside, we smelled enough cheap cologne to singe nose hairs and tried to find a quiet spot on the mezzanine. It was crowded, loud, hot, and I felt as if these types of events had passed me by. I’d be lying if I said I was looking forward to standing for three straight hours amongst the screamers and the beer-drinkers. 

But something great, in addition to the music, happened.

Up on the mezzanine were a dozen or so reserved tables. We stood directly behind one, and I mentioned to my wife, “Must be VIP.”

The table’s occupants showed up close to showtime, both women. One was bald, with gold crosses dangling from her ears. She was there to see Kane Brown, and she was excited. She even brought a small sign that referenced one of the country artist’s songs. It read, “This Is My ‘Last Minute Late Night’ Before My Surgery.” Surgery was underlined. She taped that small sign to the mezzanine railing, hoping the budding country star would see it. 

As the night went on, she asked my wife to take photos of her and her friend. My wife, of course, did.

I found out the woman, named Merin, has Stage 2 Triple Negative Breast Cancer, diagnosed June 5 of this year. She had port surgery just over a week later and has since had four rounds of Red Devil chemotherapy, and twelve treatments of Taxol and Carboplatin. One treatment a week for twelve weeks.

Someone at the concert asked when Merin, from Pell City, was having surgery. The surgery is this Dec. 12, a double mastectomy and reconstruction. She will have to spend four or five days in the hospital, and will also have four drains and expanders for a few months. 

“It was very important to me to be able to have a fun night out,” the woman told me. “I’ve only had a six-week gap in between my chemo treatments and surgery day.”

She told me that she was in Atlanta for the Luke Combs concert the previous night. She was having her own “last minute late nights” before life changes for a long while. 

“After surgery I really won’t be able to attend any more concerts for a while just because of risk of getting sick or bumped into,” she said. “I don’t know how after surgery I will be feeling. The doctors told me around a year or so. My next concert I’m going to shoot for is Florida Georgia Line, Luke Combs or Carrie Underwood.

“I have fought a long fight,” she said. “You always think, ‘Oh my, I feel bad for someone who has cancer.’ But until you live it you really have no idea how bad it is.”

It is tough financially and emotionally. The woman has a seven-year-old son she calls “wonderful,” and he needs his mother. He has had to help her more than any kid should have to. It’s not fair to him, she told me. 

“I will be glad when this is all over with so he can be a kid again, and I can take back my role as mom,” she told me. “I trust in the Lord to guide my family and I in the right direction. With Him, anything is possible.”

The concert was awesome, and I know this woman enjoyed it. I could see it on her face, hear it in her screams as Kane Brown performed “Last Minute Late Night” and “Learning” on stage. 

Kane Brown never saw her sign, as far as I know. The room was too dark at times, and too bright with purple lights at others. I wish he would have seen it, and gotten to meet this special woman.

I checked Kane Brown’s social media channels two days after the concert, just to see if he posted anything from his trip to the Magic City.

His two Tweets since the show: “My job’s to bring light into other people’s lives” and “You’re special.”

If he didn’t see that woman’s sign, you could have fooled me with those Tweets.

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.