"Whatever else you do today, you find somebody to be nice to!"

We will miss you, Ludlow.

Ludlow Porch (AKA Bobby Hanson), step-brother to Louis Grizzard, also a humorist, radio personality and one of the nicest people I have ever heard on the radio, has died.

He was funny as all get out. He would take words, write "letters to Ludlow", read them on the air - and drive people crazy.

One letter was from a woman (remember, he wrote these himself) who was engaged to a man and had just found out he was bipedal. She wanted to know if a normal woman could find true happiness with a bipedal man. Oh, the humanity. Oh the phone calls he got. The next day one of the local big-time ministers called him to say he ought not to be talking about such things on the air! That several of the women in his congregation had called to complain. And what does bipedal mean? So, gently, Ludlow told him. [You can watch him here.)

My absolute favorite he did when we first moved here. I was driving on the interstate on my way to a job interview and started laughing so hard as it unfolded that it is a miracle that I didn't wet myself or have an accident.

Some of the local landmarks in Atlanta are Stone Mountain (with the carvings of Lee, Jackson, and Davis on the side), Lake Lanier (a man made lake north of Atlanta that supplies most of Atlanta's water as well as Alabama and the panhandle of Florida), and Grant Park (not that Grant) which is where the Atlanta Zoo and the Cyclorama are.

So, the person visiting Ludlow's show (in cahoots, as the say) started talking about how they had gotten several large grants from the government for art projects around the city. They were going to place large flamingos in Grant Park - 20 feet tall pink flamingo statues. They were going to place large inflatable lily pads on Lake Lanier - with large inflatable frogs - probably 30 feet tall. But the best project would be to turn the carving on Stone Mountain into the world's largest black velvet painting. They would flock the background of the carving to look like black velvet. Then they add color to the three figures - like bright green plaid pants. And the visitor kept waxing euphoric on how absolutely wonderful these project would be and how much the people of Atlanta would enjoy them.

And people started calling the show. Half joined in the fun: we could paint a large yellow daisy on the OTHER side of Stone Mountain so those people could have something to enjoy, etc.

But what had me rolling on the floor as I am driving down the interstate was the other half of the callers. They were irate. They wanted to know who to call to stop this foolishness. Ludlow kept saying "Don't worry a whole lot about it." and then would say some other hairbrained thing the artists could do. Stone Mountain Park got so many calls they had to shut down the switchboard and Ludlow had to apologize on the air the next day. I think they banned him from the park.

I can still remember all of this - he was awesome.

But the other call I remember was some woman calling and talking to him for a really long time about nothing. When he hung up, his producer asked (on the air) why did you talk to her for so long. And Ludlow said "she needed someone to talk to."

He ended every show with "Whatever else you do today, you find somebody to be nice to."

What great advice.