For Tim.

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Tim Wilson was a friend. A friend let me hear his “Garth Brooks Has Ruined My Life” in 1992. For the next 20 years, I didn’t miss Tim anytime he showed up in or near Louisville. Most people haven’t heard of Wilson, because he was a Southern comedian. He was from “the entertainment capital of the world, Columbus, Georgia!” and talked exactly like a Georgian. Sure, he could speak less southern (we all learn to “tame” our accents as we age for you non-southerners ), but the act was this angry southerner mad at everything and everyone (an empty table in the front would prompt him to say, “you think the Rapture came and only they went?”)....mainly politicians and “white people.” He ragged on our culture because he knew it, and he grew up steeped in it. When he talked about 100,000 people taking a week off to go to a NASCAR race he got howls....because we know it’s true. (That’s a comedic secret: funny things tend to be funny because there’s at least some element of truth to what’s being said.) Tim was also an author, and NOT of a comedy book. He researched and wrote a book about some unsolved murders in Columbus, which he postulated were committed by the infamous Ted Bundy during the time Bundy was on the run after escaping from a Utah prison in 1977. By the time Bundy was captured again, in Florida, he had more murders under his belt. Wilson’s theory wasn’t proved (Bundy had long since been executed for his crimes), but it’s an interesting read. Wilson had come home to Columbus to see his older brother, Larry, when Tim had a heart attack. He was only 52. So, while in Columbus, I went to the cemetery to pay my respects. Because Tim Wilson was a friend. The “B.S.” on the marker is a reference to one of Wilson’s best-known skits, “Uncle B.S.,” about a relative (Bradford Smith Wilson) who lied all the time. One of my favorite Tim Wilson songs: