Rest Easy, Hot. Dawg Nation Loves You.
Darrell Huckaby is a syndicated columnist and author of six books including two about Georgia football. Read Huck’s Wit and Wisdom every Wednesday and Sunday. Subscribe at https://dhuck.substack.com/.
Rest Easy, Hot. Dawg Nation Loves You.
Creating Bobby Poss was one of God’s greatest ideas. I’m pretty sure God realized it, too, because as soon as he made Bobby, he threw away the mold. There will never be another like him.
My first encounter with the Poss name, like so many thousands of my generation, was seeing it printed on the cups of Coca-Cola inside Sanford Stadium. Then, in high school, Coach Ronald Bradley would treat our team at Poss’ restaurant whenever we played a game in the area. If we won.
The BP special. Sizzling hamburger steaks covered with melted cheese and grilled onions, a tossed salad and a steaming baked potato, served with iced tea so sweet it tasted like the nectar of the South.
Then in college, while living at McWhorter Hall, I got to meet the young man who had only been a legend—Bobby Poss, Jr. He had been called back into service, according to Bobby, as a snapping specialist by Coach Vince Dooley. I mostly admired this larger-than-life character from afar, in those days, but as I began writing my books and columns, our paths began to intertwine. We became friends.
If you had Bobby Poss as your friend, you had a friend for life. I loved him, as did so many others. And he loved me—as he did so many others. Because he was a people person. He loved people. That’s what he did.
And he told stories. Oh, the stories he told, with that syrupy Southern accent that puts all others to shame. If he could have bottled that accent he would have sold more of it than he did Lite beer Lite. And he sold a boatload of beer.
I can’t decide what my favorite story was. Maybe the time we were playing Nebraska in the Sun Bowl and getting trounced so badly that Bobby had given up on any chance of scoring and discarded his helmet. Near the end of the game, Georgia recovered a fumble and scored an improbable touchdown. Poss had to run out on the field and snap for the extra point.
Nebraska’s behemoth All American noseguard was lined up over center and Bobby, again, according to Bobby, told him, “OK, Hot—y’all got this one wrapped up. Let’s take it easy on this play.
His plea didn’t work. The Cornhusker player hit him so hard he crashed back into the Georgia holder and Bobby said he “woke up looking at the sky through the earhole of the borrowed helmet.”
I don’t know how much of that story is true, but it was classic Poss, so it didn’t matter.
Bobby was always Bobby. It didn’t matter if he was doing an ad for a bail bondsman on the radio, emceeing the annual lettermen’s game in Sanford Stadium prior to the G-Day game, “warming up the crowd” before a Touchdown Club meeting at the Athens Country Club, picking out hymns for Sunday school or holding court at the Hilltop Grille at lunchtime, Bobby Poss was going to be Bobby Poss. He was one of the friendliest and kindest men I have ever known in my life.
I felt better after every encounter I ever had with him. There aren’t many people about which I can make that statement. He was an Athens, Georgia institution.
I especially appreciated our relationship after God gave us both some bonus years. Doctors in three states told me I had only months to live more than a dozen years ago. Bobby had a heart attack while riding his bike at Christmas several years ago and was clinically dead for ten minutes, before Mixon Robinon’s daughters brought him back. I think we both realized we were playing with house money, and we both have gone all in every day.
We began a habit of calling one another from time to time, just to make sure things were OK. I hadn’t heard from Poss in about a month when we talked by phone Wednesday afternoon. He sounded low and weak. He told me he had been in Piedmont Athens for about a week, that they had put a new pacemaker in his heart, and that he was going home the next day.
I encouraged him to hold on through the football season because we needed to watch Georgia beat Georgia Tech for the ninth straight time on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. We made that deal.
But Bobby didn’t make it. I called him Thursday and got no answer and on Friday morning I got the unthinkable news that we now live in a world without Bobby Poss.
It’s a world I am not prepared to live in. I need to hear more stories. I need to share more phone calls. I need to hear him say, “I heard that!” and “If it ain’t Lite it ain’t right!”
I need to see him dressed up in his Georgia blazer and red pimp hat, holding up that giant red number one finger. I need to know there is still a grown man around who has a lot of little boy in him, a man who loves me and isn’t ashamed to tell me so.
The world isn’t producing Bobby Posses anymore, and it is a lesser place because of it.
Rest easy Hot. I will see you on the other side, and you will never, ever be forgotten.
Selah.
Darrell Huckaby