Chili Dawgs Always Bark at Night. Lewis Grizzard

he was still alive.

      “You know the Times,” I could have said to him. “‘All the news that’s fit to print.’”

      “That’s one thing,” my grandfather likely would have said, “but ‘all the fish that’s fit to eat’ is quite another.”

      Getting Rid of Ants Is No Picnic

      I was home visiting the folks in Moreland, Georgia, and my stepfather, H.B., and I walked out into the front yard.

      Over near the driveway, I noticed a couple of large anthills.

      “I’ve tried everything I know to get rid of these ants,” said my stepfather. “I even put grits on them.”

      For a second, I thought he had said he put grits on the ants, but you’d have to be about half-addled to do something like that, and H.B. is, without doubt, of sound mind.

      I know a lot about grits. I know they are misunderstood. The reason people from regions other than the South don’t like grits is they have never had them prepared properly.

      They are traveling through the South and stop at a Hojo for breakfast and the waitress serves them grits with their eggs and bacon.

      They’re probably instant grits to begin with, and I’m sure it’s in the Bible somewhere that instant grits are an unholy hybrid of the real thing.

      Also, our travelers don’t know to put butter on their grits and then stir their eggs and bacon into them and salt and pepper to taste.

      So their grits taste awful. And when they return home, they are asked, “Did you have any grits?”

      And they say, “The worse thing we ever ate. Almost ruined our trip to Disney World.”

      But grits on an anthill?

      “You didn’t really put grits on these ant beds, did you?” I said to my stepfather.

      “That’s exactly what I said. Putting grits on ant beds is an old remedy for getting rid of ants.”

      “Giving Northerners unbuttered instant grits is an old remedy for getting rid of tourists, too,” I said.

      “What’s supposed to happen,” H.B. went on, “is the ants try to eat the individual little grits and they get so full they explode and die.”

      I’ve heard of other old remedies. I know if you put tobacco juice on a bee sting, it will quit hurting.

      I know to put a pork chop around an ugly child’s neck to get the dogs to play with him, and I know if you bury a dishrag under a full moon your warts will go away.

      But, again, grits on an anthill?

      So I asked, “How are the grits working on the ants?”

      “These ants,” answered H.B., “don’t seem to be interested in grits.”

      “Aha!” I said. “They’re Northern ants.”

      “How do you know?”

      “Elementary,” I said. “They refuse to eat grits, and look how many of them are wearing sandals with black socks.”

      I told my stepfather not to worry about the ants. They’d be on their way to Disney World in a matter of days.

      A Grain of Truth in Straight Talk About Cereal

      Let’s have some straight talk about cereal. Cereal used to be simple. Your mother put Rice Krispies or Grape-Nuts Flakes on the breakfast table with milk.

      You dutifully filled your bowl with each and ate, because that is the way we did things back when children still respected their parents and boys didn’t wear earrings and nice girls didn’t even kiss on the first date and “going all the way” meant a trip to the state capital.

      I never stopped to ask, “Why am I eating this cereal?”

      As a matter of fact, I never stopped to ask much of anything in those days. It was against the rules to be too inquisitive, although I did wonder to myself, “What does Ozzie Nelson do for a living?”

      I probably saw every episode of The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, and I don’t remember Ozzie ever going to work. He probably sat around the house eating Rice Krispies all day, for all I know.

      I stopped eating cereal after I left home. I was tired of it. Same old Rice Krispies. Same old “Snap, crackle and pop,” which ceased to be amusing after I turned four. I figured I’d eaten all the cereal I’d ever have to eat.

      But after being off cereal for a number of years, something happened. What happened was the word “fiber.”

      It’s a simple little five-letter word that once was used almost exclusively in regard to the textile industry.

      But no more.

      First there was Euell Gibbons out there in the woods eating berries and nuts and God knows what else, and then came John Denver munching down cereal out in the Rocky Mountains someplace, telling us how important it is we get our daily dose of fiber, which means whatever it is in cereal that allegedly makes one’s bowels move regularly.

      You don’t eat cereal, goes the message, your bowels don’t move regularly and you die of about thirty-seven different types of cancer.

      That’s been hammered in my head so strongly that if I miss a single day without cereal, I call my attorney to make sure my will is in order.

      But it’s not easy to pick a cereal anymore. Television is filled with commercials boasting the fiber content of dozens of cereals.

      And the new cereals don’t have names like the cereals I ate as a kid: Rice Krispies, Sugar Pops, Frosted Flakes, Cheerios. Harmless little names.

      Today, we are urged to eat cereals with names like Nutra-Grain. Isn’t that something they feed to cows out in Nebraska?