BURKARD'S BLOG

I searched on the Internet, and found no one keeping a blog about events in Columbus, Georgia. (Well, other than a 15-year-old high school student, and who knows how much he pays attention to the news?) So being the hip web-savvy guy that I am, I decided to start a blog of my own - chronicling happenings in the town I've called home for almost six years, as well as my experiences in it.

But be warned.... I used to have a humor service called LaughLine.com, so my views may be a bit amusing. And the views are my own -- no one has paid me to present theirs. Not yet.

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17 APR 03: A TIME OF THANKSGIVING

Thank you, Pizza Hut, for sending a flyer with 18 different coupons to my mailbox Wednesday. But after noticing all 18 coupons have an expiration date of March 31 - thank you at least for keeping the Postal Service afloat. [True!]

Thank you, Shoney's, for your helpful motel discount bulletins just inside the front door of your restaurant. But when your Phenix City, Alabama restaurant has bulletins for Kentucky, a one-day drive and two states away - well, who's trying to work himself through school filling those racks?

Thank you, Bludau's, for a lovely and elegant Wednesday night dinner with church friends. And since you're a French restaurant, special thanks for appealing to local patriots by putting New York strip steak on your menu....

(Given Bludau's prices, the last thing I expected to find on this fine French menu was "freedom fries.")

Thank you, Mrs. M, (full name available on request) for revealing a new phrase to me at that Bludau's dinner. You're truly a Southern native -- to call squash, broccoli, artichokes, and similar things "Yankee vegetables."

Thank you, Al Fleming, for your Wednesday TV commentary taking WRBL and WTVM to task for their failures in local news coverage. But considering your station WLTZ doesn't even have a news department - why don't you criticize them even more?

(By the way, why didn't Al Fleming complain a bit more about WRBL when he did commentaries there? He was upset about the New Year's baby born to an unwed mother, but besides that....)

Thank you, WRBL, for reporting the eagle's cage will not be outside Auburn University's football stadium next fall. But how could you call it "Beard-Eaves Stadium" when the video clearly had a "Jordan-Hare Stadium" sign on it - and how did the news anchors who have lived in this area for years never even notice it?

Thank you, Atlanta Falcons Youth Foundation, for your $75,000 grant to Girls Inc. of Phenix City-Russell County to build a new athletic complex. But considering the project will have softball fields, a soccer field and a walking trail, but NO field for U.S.-style football [True/WTVM] - what sort of message are you really sending?

(And when your giant-sized check at a news conference spells Russell County with only one L - shouldn't you be donating money to education programs instead?)

Thank you, Columbus historic preservationists, for the fund-raisers you've done to renovate the Fifth Avenue home of blues legend Ma Rainey. But when I drove by that house Wednesday, paint was peeling badly from the front wall - so how much money did the singers at those benefit concerts REALLY get?

Are you a reader of this blog? If you are, please e-mail me. It gets lonely doing this by myself.

16 APR 03: FOND FAREWELLS

This day feels a bit strange to me. My spring cleaning ended yesterday. My church congregation doesn't begin the Days of
Unleavened Bread until tonight, after taking communion last night. So when I went running this morning, I ran south on the Riverwalk - AWAY from all the bagel and doughnut shops.

It's a tradition in the church I attend to put all leaven out of your house for the Days of Unleavened Bread, which are mentioned in the Bible. I finished this year in record time - a day and five hours early! It's wonderful to discover that vacuum cleaner cord stretches so far into the oven.

I finished cleaning so early I took the last bag of trash not only out of my apartment complex, but out of state! I left it in Idle Hour Park in Phenix City - where I might actually find it when the spring season is over.

(The thrill of leaving my trash in another state is hard to explain. It's the closest I'll ever come to leaving a puppy dog along the side of a desert highway.)

I'm still pondering another departure I arranged Monday - one I stumbled into, really. I bought a homeless man a bus ticket to California to see his ailing mother. He had better not missed that bus - because if I see him on a street corner again, I'll ask for at least a 50-percent cut of his profits.

"HOMELESS, HUNGRY AND SICK" read the sign the man held up on the sidewalk on Brown Avenue, near a Piggly Wiggly store. I could have bought him food for his hunger - but I'm probably the only person in Columbus who still remembers the five-year-old Rainbow/PUSH boycott of those stores.

I decided to pull into the Piggly Wiggly parking lot and talk to the man, since I hadn't encountered any beggars all winter. This is a switch - because usually they come to me like I'm wearing a bit word "SUCKER" on all my T-shirts.

I'm now prepared for encounters with beggars - by carrying a card from the local Task Force on the Homeless listing resources. Yet this man knew the names of every shelter in Columbus, and had explanations for why he wasn't at any of them. Either he's really a bad guy, or the staff felt insulted by all his education.

Randy was the beggar's name - and he openly admitted he's a convicted felon. Why don't I wait to meet these people until Tuesday, when I can watch Crimestoppers reports first?

Randy explained he'd been barred from the Valley Rescue Mission for misdeeds of some sort, and didn't have the money to spend a fifth night at the Salvation Army. I should have offered to pay for his next night right there - but I totally forgot about the good-looking woman named Ysivette I met there awhile back on a news story.

With all of Randy's options seemingly closed, I started wondering if I should take him in personally. For some reason, the shelters around town never mention this alternative - for YOU to house them, and help them meet their budgets....

As I offered possible options out loud, Randy suddenly offered a solution: "I'm trying to get a bus ticket to see my sick mother in California." What a golden opportunity! Instead of telling a homeless beggar to get lost and leave town, I personally could do it FOR him.

So I let Randy get into the car and we drove to the downtown bus station. He explained during the trip he'd come to Columbus to work with his relatives, and they scammed him. "I guess I should know better than to work with my family," he said. This didn't sound right to me - until later, when I remembered how many times my brother asked me to work with him while I was on vacation.

Randy's ailing mom lives in Redding, California, which he said was "just north of Sacramento." To which I replied to his surprise: "JUST north? About 180 miles." [True!] Why this didn't set off alarm bells about the accuracy of the rest of his story, I have no idea....

So how much does a bus ride cost from Columbus to Redding, to send a homeless man out of town? I wound up paying 166
dollars! I somehow thought Greyhound was still the "68 or less" bus line - but of course, that was before the warfare in Iraq drove up fuel prices.

Randy left his "homeless, hungry and sick" sign beyond a trash can outside the bus station. I never did find out what his sickness was. He seemed to walk well enough - so maybe he was like other beggars, it was pathological lying.

The alarm bells about beggars didn't go off until after I drove away. I wound up returning to the bus station on my way home from another errand. The good news: I used a credit card to charge Randy's bus ride - so any refund would go back to my credit card. The bad news: if my entire credit card number was on the receipt, Randy's probably eaten at four-star restaurants the last couple of nights.

Oh yes, before I forget - goodbye, Kansas coach Roy Williams. Have fun at North Carolina. It's too bad they wouldn't rename the field house "Allen-Williams," after you got the Athletic Director fired.

(P.S., Coach Williams - did the folks at North Carolina forget to tell you you're now in the same conference with Duke's Mike Krzyzweski? You'll get to lose to him a lot more often.)