 It's time for yours truly, Jimmy Powers with another Grantland Rice story. Hi there, this is Jimmy Powers. Today's sports writers constitute a large and truly wonderful fraternity. And the dean of this great journalistic trade was Grantland Rice. Granny helped the sports writing business grow up. He was there when a paper sports department consisted of one man. Today, the average big city paper has a sports department that consists of perhaps a dozen daily writers apart from the sports editor and his staff of inside men who get out the sport pages. So important has sports become in the national consciousness that a newspaper without sports coverage is like ham minus the eggs. In today's chapter of the Tumul and Shouting, we're going to meet several writing men that Granny grew up with. Several of these didn't write sports, but they all knew the writing game. So with a salute to the every young spirit of Granny Rice, I take up his narrative in first person. During those early 1900s in Atlanta, I enjoyed some wonderful friends. Among these were Don Marquis, Joel Chandler Harris, and Frank L. Stanton. Marquis worked with me on the journal. Stanton and Harris served for years on the Atlanta Constitution. All three were distinct personalities. During those early days in Atlanta, along with sports writing, I also put in a hitch as a theater critic. I can't name the times a young, heavy-set ex-athlete from DePaul University named Don Marquis, and I had two on the aisle. Many will recall Marquis as the fellow who later went to New York and fame with the son and tribune with Archie the Cockroach, Mahidabelle, the old soak, and other rib-tickling columns. Marquis was a firebrand, a genius. At times he was a black brooder, but his physical and mental courage were colossal. There I stood at the gate of God, drunk but unafraid. That closing line of one of Don's verses mirrored his scorn for any human soul lacking the courage of its convictions. During the fall months in 1904, Don and I helped with the coaching at Georgia Military Academy, some 20 miles from Atlanta. I recall one youngster, a half-back, who moved well with coordination and rhythm. My criticism of him to the coach was that he lacked scrap, needed more aggressiveness. The boy was Stonewall Jackson Christian, grandson of the Civil War's youngest lieutenant general. In 1920, while at West Point for a football game, I renewed my acquaintance with Christian, then an instructor in mathematics. Another Atlanta friend was Joel Chandler Harris. That name might not ring a bell with some, but I'll bet the names Uncle Remus, Brare Rabbit, or Brare Fox Wood. That wonderful series was written by Joel Chandler Harris. These books carry as much appeal today as they did in the early 1900s, because kids will always be kids. Perhaps the unstuffiest man I ever knew, Chandler usually picked up his mail by asking, anything for Uncle Remus? I recall that after Stanley discovered Dr. Livingston in darkest Africa, he toured the country for many years making lectures about his great discovery, all of which left Uncle Remus cold. One year in Atlanta, Stanley wanted to meet Chandler. Uncle Remus refused. Stanley wears a beard, he said. I don't happen to like beards. Besides, he's older than I am. I like youngsters. They're more my kind. I recall two things vividly about the year 1908. One was that I coached the Vanderbilt baseball team and a rugged bunch we were. Trying to work on a newspaper and coach at the same time requires a bit of doing, but we muddled through to a pretty fair season. The second bit of personal history was the death of my old friend, Joel Chandler Harris at the age of 60. The death of Uncle Remus jarred me. He had been a cornerstone of the Constitution in Atlanta for nearly 30 years. I wrote these lines for the next day's paper. Uncle Remus, upon the death of Joel Chandler Harris. There's a shadow on the cotton patch, the blue has left the sky, the morning meadows echo with the south wind sigh, and the gold of all the sunshine in Dixie's turned to gray, but the roses and the violets shall hide his face away. The little boy is lonesome and his eyes are filled with tears. Beyond the mists he only sees the shadows of the years. The light now lies behind him with his best friend gone away, but the softest winds in Dixie at his heart will kneel to pray. The people of the woodlands, the fur and feathered clan, the bear, the fox, the rabbit, will miss him more than man, but the rose that sways above him in his blossom-tended tomb shall turn its crimson lips of love to kiss away the gloom. The shadows on the cotton patch, the light has left the sky, a world will bow and sorrow at his message of goodbye, and the gold of all the sunshine in Dixie's turned to gray, but the sweetest flowers of the south will hide his face away. It was during these early years in Atlanta that Marquis and I became close friends with Frank L. Stanton, who turned out a column of verse for more than 40 years for the old and splendid Atlanta Constitution. As a youngster, Keats and Shelley had been my particular heroes in the world of verse, but as I rounded first base and into my 20th year, I discovered a fellow named Rudyard Kipling. The meter and jungle drums inherent in Kipling's verse captured my ear and my imagination never let go. My dear and departed pal, Obie Keeler, who was Bobby Jones's Boswell, could recite my stuff by the yard, but whatever verse I've written, more than 6,000 pieces, I've forgotten almost as quickly as I wrote it. Believe me, it just flowed. But by all odds, Stanton was the finest power I ever met. He was a mockingbird singing in a Georgia oak which happened to be flooded with moonlight. Don Marquis, a better judge of poetry than I, James Whitcombe Riley first, and Stanton second among American poets. Mighty locker rolls, just a wearing for you and hundreds of other remembered songs are pure Stanton. Those friends of the early road were interesting cronies, and as time went on, there were a lot of others, men who were distinct individualists. And Rex Beach, built like a grizzly, was certainly one. I first bumped into Rex in an artist and writer's golf tournament at Palm Beach in the middle 20s. I have spent a good part of my career picking all America football players and leading stars in all sports, champions. I could have stopped with Beach in many ways, the most amazing person I've known. He was six feet two and weighed 220 pounds. He had been an Olympic swimming ace. He had played professional football with the Chicago Cherry Circle team, the Chicago Athletic Club. At that time, around 1900, he was rated the best tackle in the country. Rex was a fine boxer and puncher. Many thought that had he turned pro, he might have beaten Jim Jeffries. He boxed often with Fred Stone, who had gone six rounds with Jim Corbett without being hit once. One night in Rector's, famed New York restaurant, Beach collided with a 230-pound Princeton tackle. In the ensuing scuffle, which lasted 27 seconds, Rex put the X-Tiger into a hospital bed for two weeks. With all these physical assets, Beach was the gentlest of men until aroused. I had read most of his books, the spoilers, the barrier, goingsome, the iron trail, and many more, most of them about Alaska and the frozen north. A wonderful skier and fine shot, Beach hunted Kodiak bears without a dog. There was no limit to this 220-pound giant who could move like a halfback. Rex was three years older than I. He had migrated from his home at Atwood, Michigan to Winter Park, Florida. There, from 1891 to 1896, he attended Rollins College. Later, he followed up with various law schools in and around Chicago. He quit law for the Yukon Trail and writing. Another close friend down through the years has been Johnny Kiran, a small, intense bundle of energy who lends stature to the statement that the best gift often arrives in the smallest package. A golfing compatriot before he gave up the game, John once remarked that he never would have quit golf if he had been able to confine his rounds to the made stone links at East Hampton, way out on Long Island. Why? The sandpipers and other marsh birds intrigued him, and Johnny has a deeper yearning for birds than for birdies, despite the fact that he was a first-class golfer, a crack shortstop at Fordham, and a good hockey player. One of the best of the sporting writers until he heard the call of the wild, Kiran was at Marion with me in 1916 when Bobby Jones played in his first amateur. Johnny and I were standing near the ninth tee waiting for Bob to come up. Suddenly there was a clear, keen, and most unusual bird-like call from the thick woods near us. Kiran froze. The bird call came again. Holy Moses, Johnny almost shouted. A yellow-breasted snook. He was off through the woods, gone over two hours. He had found the bird and followed him practically to downtown Philadelphia. You will only be a golf rider, Johnny, I said, on a western desert where there is not a tree nor a bird. I know he never would have seen the finish of a football game or a world series if a green-breasted woodpecker or a purple-tinted grouse had only given him the call. Well, that's all for today. This is Jimmy Powers' transcribe saying, So long for now.