The McCollumn - 1/18: "For Fitz"

Fitz didn't like to be interrupted when watching TV.

By all odds, he probably shouldn’t have survived as long as he did.

He experienced cruelty and hatred early in his young life, as he and his two sisters were abandoned along a semi-forgotten stretch of county road up in Walker County, Alabama.

There was no telling how long they suffered out there in the wild - alone, cold, hungry and likely wondering where the mother they had been violently snatched from was.

When the small brown puppy made his way to me a few weeks’ later, you could still see the scars of his abandonment.

His tiny ribs were clearly visible through his lackluster fur.

He would shy away from human contact, as if he had only known these sort of hands that brought anger or torment.

He savored his food, eating slowly, perhaps wondering if it would be the last he ever got, if tomorrow he’d be thrown back into the wild to fend for himself.

So went the first few weeks of the Cliff and Fitz experiment: me, learning to care for and show kindness to another living creature, and Fitz, learning to trust me and getting acclimated to his new home.

There were the inevitable battles of puppyhood.

Bathroom training was an interesting experience - my first foray into the field.

Swift discipline and a small amount of yelling made sure that no yellow puddle would appear elsewhere in the house after the Bedspread Incident.

The random gnawing of any and everything tiny Fitz could get his paws on ... well, a dog has to be allowed some joys, even if one of the front porch’s wicker chairs did get completely destroyed.

We slowly began to settle into the normal routines of pet ownership: the wake-ups, the lunchtime stop-by, the afternoon playtimes and the complete freedom of the evening, where Fitz would be allowed (supervised) to watch television in the living room on the sofa.

He always loved “The Wire”; he never fidgeted or barked during the hours it was up on the projector. 

Perhaps he found the storyline of drug-riddled Baltimore to be as riveting as I did. Or perhaps there were always barking dog noises in the background, and he simply zeroed in on them better than I did.

He learned “Sit” and “Shake,” and would be required to demonstrate the practice before each and every meal.

He was always overjoyed when my mother would send home various treats and bones for him, “for little Fitzy,” she’d always say.

Any bone given to him would be gone within an hour or so; he’d chew right through them.

Every time I ever let him out into the front yard, he always made a beeline for the huge azalea bush in the center of the yard, disappearing into its leafy magnificence, unable to be seen.

(The joke was that the azalea bush contained a portal to Narnia; Fitz was just popping over for some tea with Mr. Tumnus, and he’d be right back.)

We had a good life, Fitz and I. It wasn’t much, it wasn’t perfect, but it was ours and we liked it. No frills, no fuss - just us.

That is, until last Thursday afternoon.

I gave him a bit more time than usual in the front yard for his afternoon session, only to open the door to find he had escaped the fenced-in portion of my front yard.

I assumed he had bolted to the chicken coop next door, his favorite spot to harass, but when I made it to the coop and saw my little dog was nowhere to be found - then the sinking feeling came into the pit of my stomach.

It was then that I heard the eerie screech of a car’s breaks, the heart-wrenching thud of car colliding with animal and the agonizing cries of Fitz telling me exactly where he was.

Though the cretin who hit him had decided to drive off without any care of what he or she had done, there was Fitz, lying in the middle of the road, crying for help.

His back legs didn’t seem to work; his eyes told me he probably wasn’t long for this world.

Though I quickly rushed him to Dr. Buddy Bruce, and though he and his wonderful staff did everything they could, Fitz didn’t make it.

Had he survived, he likely would have been paralyzed - no type of life for a dog who ran like a gazelle and was overly fond of jumping.

I’ll miss my furry friend, the fellow co-habitant of McCollum Cottage.

Though I initially was unsure of whether I’d like the little bugger, now I have trouble imagining life without him. 

Who would have thought that the presence of a simple, little dog would help fill up a home that now feels depressingly empty?

We all have had pets die from time to time; this is an inescapable fact of life.

We take our time, we mourn, we try to move on and then we find another furry little creature to bring into our families.

Fitz taught me I’m capable of being a pet owner, and some day I will be again.

Good boy, Fitz. I’ll miss you.

The McCollumn - 12/28: "An open letter to whomever broke into my house Sunday"

‘Twas two days before Christmas,

And all through my house

Not a creature was stirring

... Except for a louse.

Yes, dear readers, some time Sunday between noon and 2 p.m., someone (or ones) broke into my beloved McCollum Cottage and absconded with several small electronics items in tow.

They took it upon themselves to wait until after my petsitter had left, kicking in my front door and helping themselves to the relatively scant pickings available in my home.

When I returned home from Anniston Sunday, I noticed the front door was ajar due to the abnormal amount of light in the living room, and from there was treated to bouts of anger and sadness for the remainder of the day.

Here at Christmas, when we are all supposed to be filled with the milk of human kindness and are told to feel compassion and goodwill toward our fellow man, some low-life had made off with my stuff.

Rage was the natural first emotion.

I wanted to get my hands on these turkeys and beat their skulls in with a spiked baseball bat, a’la Raekwon the Chef (one of my favorite members of the Wu-Tang Clan).

At the very least, I wanted to be able to kick them in the nads and watch them writhe around on the ground in pain for a bit.

Not very Christmasy, I’ll grant you.

As the afternoon progressed into evening, however, my perspective on the ordeal somewhat softened.

So, to the person or persons who robbed my house Sunday, I have just a few words for you, from me:

Dear robber or robbers,

I don’t know what made you choose McCollum Cottage to rob, but, as you can see by what you made off with, there really wasn’t much to steal.

See, I’m a journalist. We don’t make much money, so I try to live simply and within my means (even if I have to borrow the money to do it). No expensive electronics, no fancy artwork - just a no-frills country existence in a house that exists largely as it has since it was built in the 1950s.

I don’t have cable or internet out there; there aren’t any lines to run to the house. My Internet was through a small Verizon Wireless card, but you took that, and I cancelled it yesterday. It’s of no use to you now.

Within the laptop you stole, you may find the first disk of Season 6 of ‘Will and Grace.’ There are some good episodes on that disk. I hope you enjoy them; Harry Connick, Jr., guest stars in a few. If you find yourself not wanting the disk, feel free to slip it back into my mailbox. It’s going to be a pain in the butt to replace just that one disk, and I don’t think you really want it.

Thank you for not harming my dog Fitz. You may not have even known he was there, but I was glad to see that nothing had been done to him. Had you harmed him, I might have had to hunt you down like Liam Neeson does whenever someone takes one of his kids in a movie. The result would not have been pleasant - for you or me.

I’m not sure why you felt the need to rob my house. If it’s because you’re down on your luck and need money, well ... don’t we all. Robbing a low-income person like me isn’t going to get you there, though.

None of the items you stole are pawnable.

Half of them don’t even work properly.

If you’re giving them as gifts, you may have difficulty explaning why they seem so well-used and old. Good luck on those explanations.

I began my afternoon Sunday feeling mostly angry with you, but, now, in the light of a new day, I feel sorry for whatever decisions you made that have led you down this path.

Whoever you are, something tells me that your momma didn’t raise you to be a thief, and I dare say she’d be disappointed in your actions in this.

In a season where we’re supposed to show love and kindness to one another, you have shown greed and malice.

I want you to know I’m praying for you.

I hope God will show you that the path you are on will only lead to more destruction, more sadness and nothing of the goodness or light of life.

I hope you are able to turn your life around and are able to get back some of your humanity and a spirit of kindness.

You may have broken into my home and stolen from me both items and a sense of comfort in my own home, but the Devil is stealing your soul from you, and that’s more worrisome to me.

Just ask on Jesus’ name and beg His forgiveness.

Do that, and you will have mine as well.

May God find you and make you His. That’s my Christmas wish for you.

Sincerely,

Cliff McCollum

The McCollumn - 12/14: 'Sometimes, you wanna go where everybody knows your name'

Years ago, it was the grey building known as ‘Charlie’s Fundrinkery.’

Then, if memory serves, it was a pet store for a brief amount of time.

But, to me, the now vacant, lonely green building on Samford Avenue in Opelika will always be only one thing to me: the site of “Grown Folks Blues and More,” or, as the Bar Food Night Crew preferred to call it, simply “Miss Nancy’s.”

We discovered it completely by accident.

While I had driven by hundreds of times throughout my life, I had never felt an overwhelming urge to stop at that particular establishment; being the child of teetotaler Southern Baptists, bars were still somewhat of an anathema, especially bars in my hometown.

The rules of Bar Food Night and the goading of Drs. Adam Cooner and Jordan Gentry were enough to get me in the door.

The kindness, laughter and happiness exuded by the staff and patrons of Grown Folks (and Shorty’s awesome karaoke set-up) were what kept bringing us back time after time.

The patroness, Ms. Nancy, was always ready with a stiff drink and some loving words of wisdom - as well as an ever-present basket of fried okra, a necessary staple for our table.

She’d ask about school, our love lives and anything else she could think of that would matter. The Vets-in-Waiting would talk of classes and surgeries; I, of city council and school board meetings.

Her sister, Ms. Tootsie, would always be the first up for karaoke, singing her staple - the Luther Vandross version of the classic “A House is Not a Home.”

A few more Pink Flamingos (for me, at least), a fish platter and then we’d all be up in front of the bar and its regulars, belting out anything from Sinatra (me) to David Allen Coe (Cooner) and even Weird Al’s “White and Nerdy” (Jordan).

We’d have our fill and then slowly amble out, always sure to get a hug and parting bit of advice from Miss Nancy.

“Smile, baby,” she’d always say to me. “You know you’re too blessed to be stressed.”

Those days are gone now.

Due to a dispute with the building’s owner, Blues and More isn’t there any more, leaving another empty space in the heart of all of us who love our quirky local watering holes.

We were occasional visitors in the world at Grown Folks; there were folks there who came every week, sat at the same places, did the same things and talked to the same folks.

What happens to the cast of regulars when an iconic place just up and closes?

Do they all matriculate to some other stop, attempting to blend in with established regulars at another joint, or do they just grab a bottle from the ABC store and stick close to home?

We all need a place where we can go and just ... well ... be, a place free of judgment, pretense or shame.

We want our version of “Cheers,” that place “where everybody knows your name” - who you are, what you do and why none of that really matters.

When you’re at that bar, you’re just another face in the crowd. Who is less important than Why, as all are there to have a nice drink and forget about their troubles in the world outside.

“Grown Folks” was that place for me, the Vet School Crew and countless others who we tried to spread “the gospel of Ms. Nancy” to.

No bartender will ever dispense wit and wisdom the way Ms. Nancy did.

No taste will ever match the crispy fried okra dipped in the slightest hint of ketchup.

No beverage will ever equal the simultaneous potency and sweetness of the strawberry-flavored Pink Flamingo - and nor will I ever be able to order a pink drink in any other bar without raised eyebrows from others.

Goodbye, Grown Folks, and thank you for everything you allowed me to see and learn.

Bars may come and go,  but the memories and experiences we had in them will last a lifetime. Raise your glasses, readers; here’s cheers to the end of an Opelika institution.

The McCollumn - 12/7: "Our seniors deserve better than this"

Author's note: This week's column makes more sense if read after the article on which it is based. My visit to the Boykin Center was equal parts joyful and heartbreaking, and I am thankful to the Auburn Adult Day Center for letting me share their story.
Read the article, then read the column, please.

http://opelikaobserver.com/community/902-state-budget-cuts-could-soon-close-area-adult-day-center

Marian Johnson and Raymond Pogue smile as

they await their lunch at the Auburn Adult Day Center.

Thanks to budget cuts from our state’s legislature and governor, 28 adult care centers across the state, including our own located at Boykin Center in Auburn, will be shut down by the end of February 2013.

18 senior adults here in Lee County will go from having a loving, familial environment filled with attention and care from trained professionals to being left alone to fend for themselves all day, with only the television to keep them company.

It only takes around $160,000 a year to fully fund the adult care center here - and only $2 million to keep all the centers running statewide, but our current budget apparently doesn’t prioritize the needs of more than 400 lower-income seniors.

Nevermind that, at $26 a day, the programs are far cheaper than the nursing home alternatives that most of these seniors will be placed into.

Thanks to advances in medicine and technology, we’re all living longer, and we ourselves could end up in programs like this one - but only if they still exist.

I encourage all of you to visit the Boykin Center to talk to the patrons and to see the happiness it brings to their lives.

For many of the people there, that center is a staple in their life, and the other patrons are de facto family members.

Go play some dominoes, help Mr. Pogue with one of his word puzzles and see what a remarkable difference a little care and attention can bring to someone’s life - and then let Montgomery know we need this vital service.

The McCollumn - 11/30: "Godspeed NASA - you’ll probably need it"

Statistics and common sense tell us newspaper readers trend older demographically, and our paper proves those expectations, which is why I’m jealous of a number of you dear readers.

You, my slightly older friends, got to live the excitement of the “Space Race.”

You looked on in intrigue (and in horror) in 1957, when the USSR launched Sputnik , the first man-made satellite to orbit the Earth.

Could America catch up, or were we headed for a Soviet domination of outer space?

Five years later, in 1962, with a parting of “Godspeed John Glenn,” Glenn orbited the Earth aboard Friendship 7, the first American to do so. We were, apparently, catching up. 

The fledgling National Aeronautics and Space Administration, with its scores of engineers, physicists and other scientists from around the country collaborated to create some of the most amazing achievements man has seen, to not only eclipse the Soviet program, but to land a man on the moon.

And so they did, with Neil Armstrong treading where no one had tread before.

At one time, NASA spending affected every state in our union - and we all worked together so that our nation could both prosper and “win” the race.

There were subsequent Apollo missions and several others that came after them, but the public didn’t seem to take much note any more.

Oh sure, if something went horribly wrong, we all noticed (Apollo 13, the Challenger disaster), but, by and large, space had lost its allure.

We’d been to the moon, we’d won the race; what more did we need to learn from space?

By the time I came around in 1986 (the same year as the Challenger disaster), space wasn’t cool.

Most kids wanted to be a doctor or a vet, while some held out hopes to be able to “explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.”

I was one of those kids, with a telescope and star maps, gazing toward the heavens in search of something more.

At Opelika Middle School, I was blessed to be a part of the “Radio Jupiter” project, and got to listen as sound waves bounced back and forth between our world and the Great Planet.

I was even prouder to learn that we had an Opelikan astronaut - Jim Voss, Class of ‘68. Someone from here had done it before, so why couldn’t we?

NASA kept sending rockets and astronauts into “the final frontier,” but space was no longer alluring, and deficit hawks across the nation began to question why so much money was needed.

Now, we have no more space shuttles, and our astronauts have to hitch rides into space with other nations, even with the Russians we feared for so long.

Programs are seeing their funding cut, and we’re seeing severe job losses and economic depression come to towns who built themselves up with aerospace jobs. If there are no more space shuttles to build parts for, why keep all those people on the payroll?

Educational programs and opportunities to help inspire our youth have also declined, and we see the younger generation slip further away from having interest, or even awareness of, space.

I worry that if funding cuts and program cancellations continue, this nation could dig itself into a hole it will not be able to leap from. We could be sowing the seeds now for a loss of American dominance in outer space. After all, we’re already losing this generation.

We have always been spurred by a belief in American exceptionalism, that this nation is not only among the best and brightest, but the actual best.

By not continuing to invest in our nation’s space program, we run the risk of finding ourselves lacking the tools to inspire the next generation of engineers, astrophysicists and even astronauts themselves, to say nothing of the scores of other children who simply gain a spirit of exploration that could translate into innovations and developments in hundreds of other fields.

By investing in a renewed spirit of discovery, we could see untold dividends in our children’s generation. By exploring and cataloging other planets, we learn more about our own planet - the whats, whys, and hows of the Earth itself.

By venturing out further into our universe, we find an ever-expanding cosmos of stars and other celestial bodies that we never knew existed and we hold out the hope that, perhaps, we are not alone.

An investment in our space program is not just throwing money into outer space; it is a commitment to continuing to support the ideals of exploration and creativity that helped make this nation what it is today.

NASA and its programs represent the best American ideals, our belief that through knowledge, education and hard work, we can do anything we can set our minds to - whether its putting a man on the moon or even kicking off to Mars.

So, again, I’m jealous of a number of you.

You got to grow up when space was cool - when knowledge and creativity were celebrated.

You don’t know how lucky you were. You really don’t.

The McCollumn -11/16: "'Redneckognizing' the problem"

I don’t know when it was that we, as a nation, completely lost our minds, but I feel the need to begin by blaming what was once called The Learning Channel, dear old TLC.

What was once a channel with programming about interesting health issues and the occasional home redesign show now regularly features all sorts of oddities (and, no, I don’t mean the Sarah Palin reality show.)

There are the almost-always morbidly obese women on “I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant,” who thought their forthcoming offspring was just an exceptionally large, painful bowel movement.

There’s “Little People, Big World,” which I always thought was meant to make people feel sympathetic to the plight of dwarves, but I generally come away from that show thinking that the dwarf dad is really a jerk - regardless of his height.

Then, there’s the most terrifying of them all, the show that makes me worry about how far ‘round the bend we’ve gone as a people: “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo.”

The show, which attracted more ratings than Mitt Romney’s RNC speech and tied Bill Clinton’s speech at the DNC, features  seven-year-old self-proclaimed “beauty queen” Alana, a somewhat chubby child who is prone to spout instantly sickening and captivating catch-phrases like “You better redneckognize” and “A dolla makes me holla, honey boo boo.”

What is cute for eight seconds becomes horrifying over eight episodes.

This behavior is not only rewarded, but supported by Alana’s family, a truly bizarre cast of characters that makes those nice backwoods people from “Deliverance” seem downright folksy and Mayberryesque.

Family game night can include the staple of “Guess Whose Breath,” where a family member is blindfolded and the others breathe in their face until they can guess who it is by the olfactory clues.

This is just the base level of crazy that goes on the ratings flagship “Honey Boo Boo,” where there is no such word as shame.

Why is that a good thing?

Isn’t some shame a necessary thing to keep you from doing ridiculously impulsive and stupid things?

And, I suppose, most importantly: when did sheer ignorance become a valid point of view?

The spotlight of fame has become a beacon for infamy, as “reality television” has truly only shown us the seedy underbelly of what we’ve become as a society.

We cheapen the institution of marriage by shows like “The Bachelor,” “Joe Millionaire,” or the grandfather of them all, “Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire?” We encourage backstabbing and sneakiness as necessary human traits in shows like “Survivor” and “The Apprentice.” We even encourage the voyeurism and lack of privacy our age is known for in shows like “Big Brother” and “Glass House.”

I’m not yet sure what the “Honey Boo Boo” means for us and our society in these perilous times, but, just in case, we should at least “redneckognize” the problem is here, and it ain’t leavin’ any time soon.

Supplemental McCollumn - The Biennial Congressional Endorsement

W. Fred Woods: Write-In Candidate

for the AL 3rd Congressional District

Every two years, voters across this great land of ours go to their polling places to cast their votes on a plethora of candidates and issues vital and important to their respective locales.

This year is no different. In addition to the attention-grabbing presidential race, voters here in Lee County will cast their ballots on statewide offices and amendments that could preserve the Forever Wild program, limit legislative pay and stop the annexation of small towns by their larger neighbors (to name a few).

We’re also obliged to pick between two candidates for our U.S. congressional district, where the Hon. Mike Rogers (R-Anniston) will take on Lee County Commissioner John Andrew Harris (D-Opelika) to defend the seat Rogers has held since 2003.

In the last election, feeling that neither candidate deserved the voters’ support, I endorsed former OHS athletic director and head football coach Spence McCracken for the job. The platform of “God bless America and God bless the Dogs” garnered the coach a few dozen write-in votes (more than I expected, to be honest).

This year, I find myself in a similar situation - neither Rogers nor Harris seems completely deserving of the job that they seek - and am forced to come up with another write-in candidate who could better serve the needs and desires of the AL 3rd.

After much prayer and soul searching (and blindfolding myself to throw a dart at index cards with potential candidate names on them), I believe I’ve found the guy:

William Fred Woods, editor of the Opelika Observer and a stalwart employee of the United States Department of Agriculture for decades.

Here’s a bit of bio, courtesy of an article written on Woods by Ann Cipperly:

“Woods’ diverse career included being an extension specialist, researcher, a policy advisor for both U.S. and foreign government and a national program leader for public policy for research and extension education. Over the years, he received many honors including the SAEA Lifetime Achievement Award, the K.J. Hildreth Award for Career Achievement in Public Policy Education and the Woods Award for Excellence in Public Policy.”

Read that last part again: The Woods Award for Excellence in Public Policy, as in the W. Fred Woods Award. They named the award for excellence after him; enough said, right?

Woods has served with distinction in Armenia after the fall of Communism, helping the Armenian government create and develop its agricultural policy.

He's helped craft portions of our tax code, and once even had to help IRS officials figure out how to implement a tax credit for farmers Woods helped develop.

He’s spent his entire career working to help bridge the gap between policy and practice, and has the ability to explain complex documents and figures as if he were discussing the latest sports scores.

I’m proud to get to work with the man every single day, and I know that if we send Woods back to Washington, we’ll be sending a man who can cut through the bullcrap and idiocy that currently plagues our nation’s capitol.

He wouldn’t put up with falsities or misinformation from congressional colleagues; he speaks truth and expects others to act the same.

He’s worked across the aisles for years in his roles with the USDA, and could help bring a much-needed spirit of bipartisan cooperation back to the “people’s chamber.”

Of course, when I asked Woods if he would mind being the McCollum-backed write-in this year, he demurred and pulled a William T. Sherman/Calvin Coolidge/Lyndon Johnson move, saying “If drafted, I will not run; if nominated, I will not accept; if elected, I will not serve.”

Well...

Even if Woods stays true to his threat, I’m left to genuinely believe even no representation whatsoever would be better than the choices we have.

Fred Woods for Congress: Let’s Cut the Crap and Work Together.

Works for me.