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(Longtime local media workhorse Bob Griffin passed away Monday of complications from a brief illness.)
By JOHN JAMES MARSHALL/Designated Writers
For reasons I still don’t understand, they didn’t retire the trophy after they named Bob Griffin as “Mr. Shreveport” in 2004. No slight to those who have won it before and since, but let’s be real about it – nobody else comes close.
Mr. Shreveport died Monday. Trust me; there will never be another.
Nobody cared more about Shreveport than Bob Griffin. He was a relentless promotor of all things local and could find the silver lining in anything that resembled a dark cloud. If he had bad news to report, he would quickly give the bright side of the story.
I was fortunate to have three incarnations with Bob and I am thankful for every one of them. First, I was one of those Bob & His Buddies kids who was fascinated by his children’s show. It was can’t-miss TV for a kid in the mid-1960s and when Bob would pop on the straw hat, we strapped it for every second of it. He was the coolest adult we had ever seen.
In the 1980s, I became a sports writer at the Shreveport Journal, where people worked some very strange hours. It was not usual for our paths to cross in the newsroom at 1 in the morning as I was finishing up a game story and Bob would come in from some late-night adventure and start cranking out his column for the lifestyle section as one of his side jobs. By then, Bob was a fixture as the TV sports authority in the Ark-La-Tex. Others might have been better, but Griffin was the king … and everybody knew it. No matter how many times he’d botch an Eastern European tennis player’s name (he never did master the pronunciation of Goran Ivanisevic … nor did he care), he was still Bob Griffin and that’s all that mattered.
And then when Bob’s career took a different turn, he kept being who he was in different forms of media. We both moved into radio and wherever we’d see him walk by, we’d pull him into the studio just to get a few words of wisdom. He always delivered. I can’t begin to tell you how great it was just to be around him for a few minutes.
I can’t tell you how many times I’d walk into a press conference or a post-game interview and see Griffin. It brought a smile to my face every single time. If Bob was there, things were just going to be a little bit better. Griffin didn’t work a room as much as a room worked him. He was magnetic like that.
To have Bob Griffin in your life was truly a treasure. He was your friend, even if you never met him.
February 3, 2020
The Super Bowl To Beat All Bowls
Ran originally in Sunday February 2, 2020 editions of The Times and The News-Star.
Today’s Super Bowl is not really the super-est bowl.
Not even close.
We don’t have parties for the Real Super Bowl.
But we should.
Most of you have lived through this nightmare and will agree: you leave you house in the morning with not a plumbing care in the world, and when you return and have to walk around your toilet that’s sitting in the garage and your bathtub that’s sitting on your porch, you know the night will be a long one.
Oh, the humanity …
We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again, but only because understanding it is one of the most important things you could ever know, and that is this: they key to life is plumbing.
If it gets backed up, in your body or in your home, the world stops until that is tended to and made right again.
Plumbing is No. 1. Fried chicken is a close second, but even the unbridled joy that really good fried chicken brings is a distant second to The Big P.
And remember: you can’t buy plumbing on the Internet. If you’re thinking of a career choice, keep that in mind. Please don’t think I’m joking.
So we had a bathtub and we had a toilet. But anybody can have those two things. The key is having them hooked up to operating plumbing. And this, we did not have. And would not have, in total working order, for 12 days. The Dirty Dozen. Literally. And dirt was just the half of it, as you might imagine.
When we bought the house, we knew the bathtub was going to soon fall into the ground, the result of Shade Tree Carpentry. We got a money break because the inspector saw and reported the rotten wood underneath, the result of rain water coming into the house which, ideally, if your bathroom carpentry is up to snuff, rainwater won’t do.
This was not ideal.
There was the same problem under the kitchen floor. More shoddy remodeling a few years back. Unfortunately, the home inspector didn’t see that, and the sinking of the kitchen floor didn’t begin until a few months after we’d moved in. This is another Blues Ballad for another time, but trust me, replacing a kitchen floor will make you go into your backyard grass, lay down with all your clothes on, and cry like a small wet child.
But kitchen floors are child’s play compared to bathroom woes.
A couple of weeks ago — the day we’d scheduled for the stud carpenters and plumbers to fix our Indoor Armageddon — I left with a feeling of impending calamity. Turns out, it was well-founded.
Hey, you don’t just remove 400-pound ceramic tubs, commodes, build a foundation with real wood, fix leaky windows, and replace all of that in a calendar day. Doing it right takes time. We knew that.
But our colons didn’t.
Yet finally, things were back in place. Tub ‘n’ Toilet. The Daily Double. It was a Wednesday and I wept. For joy. Couldn’t take a shower because the mortar on the tile had to dry, but there was hope.
Until the next night, Thursday, when the hot water heater went on the fritz.
We are blessed to have shelter and have running water, but when you get used to hot water from turning a knob, it tends to bring out the native in you when that doesn’t happen.
Murphy’s Law. But … I could get a water heater come Monday.
More hope. More joy!
Until Saturday night, when the plumbing in the whole house backed up.
Murphy’s Law. Again.
Gratefully, our studly plumbers bailed us out that night, feeling our pain, and Monday evening there was hot water.
Since I couldn’t take a shower for several days between getting the new commode and hot water, and a floor that didn’t sink, it freed up time for me to read about the new toilet from an instruction manual that came with the purchase.
“THANK YOU. You have purchased a high performance toilet featuring the latest innovations.”
Glory!
“This high efficiency 1.28 gallon per flush toilet meets the EPA’s WaterSense guidelines by using 20% less water compared to standard 1.6 gallon per flush toilets, all the while delivering maximum performance.”
Maximum performance? MAXIMUM performance? Preach!
“In addition to great performance,”— What?! There’s MORE?! — “your new toilet also features a patented, permanent EverClean surface, which permanently inhibits the growth of stain and odor-causing bacteria, mold and mildew on the entire toilet surface.”
Never before had a toilet left me speechless. Until now.
It’s a Super Bowl. And on Super Bowl Week. What are the odds?
She’ll be one week old Monday.
It’s a Super Bowl Week Miracle.
Maybe I’ve said all that to say this: they’re playing the Super Bowl today, but it’s not the real Super Bowl. That would be the one in your bathroom. Don’t take it for granted.
Hopefully, even if your team loses today, the real Super Bowl will be working. And if that’s the case, who’ll be the real winner?
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