The Coffee Breaker
by Ronald Brantley
The title sounds something like a Lewis Grizzard article. In case you don’t remember Lewis, he was one of the funniest, saddest, or, at times, far out writers I’ve ever read. His books are still on the market. Lewis wrote twenty books in his short career and all of them that I’ve read were good, and I’ve read quite a few of them.
Lewis Grizzard died at an early age on March 20, 1994; it won’t be long before it will be twenty years. He died at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia; he never regained consciousness after the latest of many heart surgeries. He was only 47 years old. He left a living will, stating that if he had brain damage during the operation, and if the doctors said he survived but had extensive brain damage, to let him die, and they did. Grizzard was born October 20, 1946 at Fort Benning, Georgia; his father was stationed there. Lewis’s mother and father divorced when he was about six years old, several years later his mother remarried. Lewis lived in Moreland, Georgia; he loved both his mother and father. He grew up loving both basketball and baseball, being good at both sports and he was known all over town.
Lewis never forgot the people in town, and mentioned them quite often in his newspaper articles that came out weekly in over four hundred and fifty newspapers. Lewis never stopped smoking, drinking or remarrying. Just two days before the operation, he wed his fourth wife; Debra Kyle, at the hospital in Atlanta. His three wives before Debra gave him food for several of his books such as If Love was Oil I’d be about a Quart Low.
He didn’t like, and spoke out against, televangelists, gays and many other such groups, and they often spoke out against him. He wrote one book about his father, some critics said it was his best. The book was titled My Daddy was a Pistol and I’m a Son of a Gun. He is the man that created the saying about a new book he was writing when he died; the book was supposed to be named, Life is Like a Dogsled Team, if You Ain’t the Lead Dog, the Scenery Never Changes. Lewis loved two dogs; Catfish was a Lab that Grizzard wrote about in many of his stories, and there was also the mascot of the Georgia Football Team; UGA.
“Go Dawgs” was one word as far as Lewis Grizzard was concerned. He spoke of Southern values and said their values are instilled at birth and these values remain in the blood forever.
In my opinion, even though Lewis Grizzard and Erskine Caldwell were both born in or around Moreland, they should never be compared; Lewis Grizzard loved Georgia and the South and you could always tell it. Erskine Caldwell on the other hand slammed the Southern people and their way of life. Have you ever read God’s Little Acre? Caldwell wrote it, so there is no way to compare him to Grizzard.
He wanted to do something special for this girl he married two days before the operation and four days before he died. Well, I haven’t heard since, but according to his will, he left her fixed up. She had a five-year old daughter that Lewis cared for with all of his heart. In the later part of his life, he mentioned having children of his own but this never materialized. Lewis had a half-brother, a pretty well -known disc jockey that he cared for, too. There was one man that Lewis didn’t like much, but he promised to mention him in his will, and he did—he said “Hello, John.”
Lewis liked to go to the Varsity Restaurant in Atlanta and eat chili dogs. He said he could eat them in the afternoon and listen to them bark at night. Almost twenty years after Lewis Grizzard died, in a way it seems like a lifetime away, and just like Desert Storm, it seems like yesterday. Thanks to Mrs. Nancy Andrews for her help in this article. Read a book by Lewis Grizzard, you will enjoy it, he would have liked it and I will too.
Ronald Brantley
