Icewind's Ramblings

Crepe Murder in your neighborhood? It’s late March once again, the time when we look forward to spring blooms, the return of songbirds, and a parade of maimed crepe myrtles reduced to stumps by bored guys with saws. Since I returned to the south from Alaska I am amazed how every year the horrid practice of stupidly turning beautiful trees into stumps, but people do it anyway. Why? Because they see work crews doing it to trees around parking lots at the mall.  (One can never go wrong taking gardening cues from the landscape at a Galleria.  Eye roll. ) Or a truer reason is because they see all their neighbors sawing away their crepe myrtles and don’t want to be labeled a “no-cut nut” on Facebook. (Social media can be so cruel.) Those idiots who planted a crepe myrtle that grows 30 feet tall and wide six inches from the front door, shame on you! Crepe murder may never end, but that doesn’t mean we have to accept it.  When you spot a crepe myrtle that has been savagely chopp

It has been awhile since my friend Lewis Grizzard passing, March 20, 1994, and it seems like a lifetime ago that we used to sit at the bar in Harrison’s on Peachtree telling funny stories and sharing our Southern heritage with anyone who would listen.  We joked about our several ex-wives and that became part of his stand-up comedy routine.  I miss my friend, his witty humor, his outlook on Southern life, and I miss having those drinks together with his stepbrother Ludlow Porch (Bobby Hanson) each night laughing the time away.  Much has changed since those times, his passing, and my time in Alaska, but the stories still make me laugh. I am reminded of a story that Lewis used to tell in his concerts years ago, it is the story of an older retired couple and the renewed spirit of youth getting ready for a cruise. I hope you will enjoy: “Mr. Wojciehowicz had been retired for a year when his wife of fifty years suggested one day, "Why don't we take a cruise for a week