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Dear hearts, we've come through January 2010 with some of the strangest weather I can ever recall. Bitter cold with ice and snow, rain, rain, and more rain pretty much sums up January. The forecasters are saying a chance of snow again for northern Georgia this weekend. I have my North Face coat ready if we get the bitter cold like we had a few weeks back and a Hawaiian flowery shirt in the event it hits 64 like it did last Sunday. I no longer have to wait to get the weather forecast from television. The Internet has revolutionized how we get information. Go to www.vPike.com and write in your address. I am still trying to get my head around this technology that Google has come up with. If you go to that site you can take a virtual drive in Tallapoosa. You can type in any address and go on a virtual tour of any place you desire. I write this column and it gets to where it needs to go via the Internet. I have found that college students get most of the useful information they need from the Internet. The discovery that college students don't listen to the radio or watch television in the traditional way was something I learned from them in 2008. I am told that General Motors is coming up with a way to listen to live Internet audio streaming from their vehicles in the near future. Does anyone remember FM radio only played quote "beautiful music" up until the early 1970s? Can you recall only having AM radio in your automobiles? Remember Joe Rumore on WVOK out of Birmingham and how he made you feel like you were a trusted friend? Local AM radio had Lee Williams on WWCC in Bremen. I never saw him without a jacket and tie and a prefectly sculpted coif. I can't keep up with the innovative technology they keep coming up with. Have any of you You Tubed? The last count was 600,000 uploads a day are on You Tube. You can watch an idiot trying to jump a semi tractor-trailer on a skateboard or watch the Happy Goodman Family on the Gospel Jubilee from the 1960s. Facebook is now a huge rage. Many of us have reconnected with long lost friends because if Facebook. With the Superbowl coming on February 7th it seems not quite right. Football is an autumn sport. February 7th is a shade over a month out of the first day of spring. The Superbowl will have the New Orleans Saints against the Indianapolis Colts. Does anyone remember when the Colts were in Baltimore and had such legends as Johnny Unitas, Lenny Moore, Raymond Berry, and Georgia's own Jimmy Orr? Baltimore now has the Ravens that at one time were the Cleveland Browns. This is all giving me a headache. Payton Manning has shattered many of John Unitas' records and is perhaps is the best quarterback ever to play the position. I interviewed Archie Manning a few years ago. He is quite proud of having two world class kids playing the same position he did as a Saint. All three of the Mannings should be in the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio someday.

Last weekend I took Presley, Callie and neighbor Meghan Glaze to see the new Alvin and the Chipmunks movie. It was rated PG! How does a kid movie NOT get a G rating. I have not seen a movie that hasn't been promoted on the Disney Channel since becoming a dad. It was $28 to get into the movie and popcorn, candy, and soft drinks made the tab close to $60. My first car in 1969 cost only $140 more than our trip to the movie in Carrollton. Can any of you recall the Grand Theater on Head Avenue cost about fifty cents and that a huge bag of popcorn was a dime? I spent a bunch of Saturday afternoons at Mr. Moon's theater as a kid watching a science fiction movie over and over again. I first saw "Gone With The Wind", and the "Ten Commandments" there. I thought it was kind of ironic that I saw people breaking a few of them while watching Cecil B. DeMille's masterpiece. I also remember as a little fellow hearing about Robert Mitchum in "Thunder Road" and how he once stopped at the Burger Inn on his way to Atlanta. I'd like to hear from you how you remember Tallapoosa back in the day.