Lewis Grizzard

Lewis Grizzard started as a News Reporter for the Atlanta Constitution, and soon parlayed his humor into a regular column filled with humor and southern traditions. He wrote several humorous books, and was an accomplished public speaker. This posting provides three stories that he frequently told during such events. Once again, it is to be remembered that jokes such as these are effective only if they help to make a point and if they are told to the appropriate audience. Grizzard was a master of this technique.


The Confederate Soldier

General Sherman burned down Atlanta in 1865. He was going out I-20 freeway heading toward Stone Mountain; he has 125,000 soldiers marching behind him. He’s going by Stone Mountain and hears this noise. Up on top of Stone Mountain there’s this lone confederate soldier waving a saber in one hand and a confederate flag in the other. He is shouting all kinds of obscenities down to the union army. Sherman calls a halt to his troops and says, “Listen, we got to put a stop to this. This is embarrassing. We got CBS news here, CNN, USA Today, and whole bunch of reporters. This is bad for public relations.” He says to his lieutenant, “Who’s the toughest man in our outfit?”

“That would be Sergeant Swartz, sir; he’s the meanest, toughest, and most qualified trooper we’ve got.”

“Well send him up there on the mountain, and take care of that problem.”

Swartz goes up to the top of the mountain, and he’s not there five minutes until his body comes flying off the mountain and lands right square in front of the General. Outraged, he orders ten more of his best Union soldiers to the top of the mountain. Not a single one of these soldiers lived to tell the tale. Sherman said, “This is impossible, we got to do something about this right away. Send a 150 of our finest men up there to take care of that soldier.”

Only one soldier lives to tell the story, and he’s bleeding from every pore of his body with his uniform torn to shreds. He walks up the General, and Sherman asks “What’s going on up there. I send 150 soldiers to do a job and only one comes back!”

The soldier looks through bloodied eyes and says: “It’s a trick General Sherman, they’s two of ‘em up there!”

Georgia Tech Football

Auburn was playing Georgia Tech in a late season game that didn’t mean a lot to either team since they were both were tied for last place in the SEC. The game was tied with about six minutes left in the game, when Georgia Tech punted and an Auburn player dropped the ball. A tech player accidentally fell on the ball and they signaled a fumble recovery, leaving Tech on the 20-yard line. That was the closest they’d been to the end zone all year. But Auburn disputed the call and raised all kinds of ruckus.

The argument went on for ten minutes, and finally, the Auburn coach just took his team, walked off the field and headed back to Alabama. Georgia Tech remained on the field, and three plays later, they scored a touchdown!

A Pig Named Jake

You know a pig is one of the smartest animals on a farm, smarter than a horse or even a dog. A lot of people don’t know that. I remember this farmer Brown, down in South Georgia who had two sows (that’s a female pig if you are a city boy). Now this ain’t no dirty story, it's just a story about agriculture, but this farmer needed to find a male pig to mate with his sows so that he could start raising hogs. He asked a friend on a neighboring farm if he could bring his sows for a visit, and the neighbor said he’d be happy to oblige, and he could just bring them on up the next morning. He said he'd introduce the sows to Jake, his biggest and best male pig.


So the next day, Brown puts his two sows in the back of his pickup and heads over to his neighbors farm. He gets mud all over his clothes, but together they place these two big sows into the pasture with ole Jake. Man, there’s the biggest show you’d ever see. Over two thousand pounds of pork scrambling around the mud as the mating process takes place. After it was over, Brown asked his friend “Now, how am I going to know if this took or not?”

Well, the friend said, “You just look out in the lot in the morning. If they are playing around in the sunshine, you know that things are okay. But if they are rolling around in the mud, you’d better bring ‘um back for another visit.”

Brown looks out the next morning, and sees the sows playing in the mud. Reluctantly, he puts them in the truck and takes them back to his friend’s farm. There’s another mating ritual, but this time it was much more active and there was an even longer courtship. Eventually, he takes his sows back home.

The next day, he looks out and again the hogs are wallowing in the mud, so he takes them back for third visit. This time it was a real long affair, the dogs started barking, and the entire barnyard knew there was something going on.

The next morning, farmer Brown got up and, not having the courage to look out the window, he told his wife to look out and tell him if his hogs were playing in the sunshine or if they were wallowing in the mud. She said, “Well, Neither One.”

“Well, where in the world are they?”

“They are in the cab of the truck, honking the horn!”