I was a kind of an odd kid growing up. When you share a room with your teenage brother, and typically found yourself falling to sleep, hearing him type short stories to submit to the New Yorker–well I doubt most people grew up that way. My brother’s path ultimately led him away from fiction and toward journalism. As a result, I got to tag along with my brother to cover the opening of one of the first MARTA rail stations–among other unique things in my life.

The average kid my age did not have an affinity for reading Lewis Grizzard or listening to his step-brother, Ludlow Porch, on the radio. I did.

Grizzard was a Southern icon for my childhood, he’s part of Atlanta’s past. He died in 1994 at the age of 47. My memory’s faulty, I always assumed he was older than that. To think in a little more than five years I will be the age Grizzard was when he died amazes me.

The mid-1990s is when Atlanta changed for me–and not for the better. The Olympics attracted a great many transplants. The mid-1990s brought a rush hour starting around 5 AM. Old Atlanta, like Lewis Grizzard, is dead. I see glimpses of it, every once and awhile. But rarely. It might be why I like to drive around town late at night, it reminds me of what the city used to be–when I was a kid. Don’t get me wrong, there are many great things about my hometown, that construction and technology and overcrowding cannot kill. And I’m grateful for that.