SOUTHBOUND

8/8/05

Jeff Burk Photo

h, the beautiful South.

Robert Daniel Martin, my grandfather on my father’s side, was born in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, in 1899 and his relatives were scattered about there, Mississippi and Tennessee. In fact, I consider myself a southerner; I live in Valley Village right in the voluptuous velvet bosom of SOUTHERN California. So when Jeff Burk told me that in the first week of my two-month St. Louis vacation, we and fellow staffer Ian Tocher were going to Huntsville, Alabama for $101,000-to-win Top Fuel show, I hallucinated acid-wild on “Uncle Dave” Macon, Hank Williams SR., the stars and bars, white-only bathrooms, and Roy Hill.

My dad’s family had a rich southern heritage. He told me that the first time Grandpa bopped him was when he was 8 years old and had to confess that he lost a dozen Martin family Confederate war medals while he was playing “army” with his little pals. My grandfather told me that the Martins were related to a lot of Chapins and Simpsons in the area. You know, O.J., all of them. He said he wasn’t sure but his uncle, one Joseph Simpson, was something like an interim Lieutenant Governor of Mississippi and was hung by his thumbs and horsewhipped in the Jackson city square, before being run out of the state. In fact, no one ran him out; he did it all by himself. Something about him being a carpet salesman, carpetbagger, something like that.

So, I was going back “home.” Actually, I had been to the South many, many times when I worked for National DRAGSTER. Steve & Laura Earwood, the aforementioned Mr. Hill, the Couch Family, Jim Frizzell, Freddie Brown, Eric Paul Brooks, and other gentleman and ladies of the area broke me in right proper when I made the races.

But here I was going to Alabama … maybe the “Foghorn Leghorn” of the whole deal. In many ways, I was like that intellectual little chicken that Foghorn had to continually correct while he was struggling to get the chicklet’s feet solidly planted on the ground. You know … “Nice kid, just a little on the dumb side.”

I’m aware of my social shortcomings, all 1,097 of them, and I was determined to bite right into the Alabama experience. Be cool, but not a typical Yankee. I had been there only once before when my brother Ernie and I drove to the Pride, Alabama, coon dog cemetery on the recommendations of the Earwoods. I cried like a baby on that hallowed ground and would’ve probably escaped that journey without a single faux paus except we made a brief stop just before the Mississippi/Alabama border.

We went into this scantily stocked convenience store and I picked up my usual “atomic” cocktail (half pint of George Dickel and Goody’s Headache powder) and were headed for the screen door exit when I saw a stock row of Off insect repellent.

I looked over at Ernie and said, “Black Flag works great, but you can’t beat off. (Ha Ha Ha). The store clerk missed the humor.

"That sass might work in Hollywood, but it don’t work here.”

“Hey, dude, I’m just down here to find my head.”

“And it may still be here when you leave.”

Blew it. Damn, we’ll have to work on an improvement. As Steve Earwood would’ve put it, “Son, maybe we can overcome a slow start.”

Well, I was bound and determined in 2005. No wise guy-isms, just appreciation for this garden state. Burk and I rolled into Huntsville on Thursday approaching the Fourth of July Weekend and I was sure this was going to be a weekend to remember.