"Right Down Peachtree"

A few years ago, a friend and I were sitting in a box blind on an unseasonably warm January afternoon, wishing some deer would visit the green field over which we were hunting. It was a slow afternoon, like so many hot ones down here tend to be. About twenty minutes before dusk, a few cautious does stepped out of the treeline and walked gingerly into the field.

“Who gets to shoot?” I whispered as we watched the deer alternate between eating and scanning the woods for danger.

“You take the shot,” my buddy replied, “I already have a couple deer at the processor.”

With that, I singled out a fat, bottle-nosed slickhead that didn’t appear to have any fawns in tow, and settled in for the shot. It crumpled stone dead at the bark of my .270.

“Nice shot,” he offered.

I threw open the action and ejected the casing. It bounced off the side of the blind and clunked to the floor between my feet. “Thanks,” I said. “Right down Peachtree.”

“Do what?” he asked curiously. He squinted his eyes like I’d just suggested we go grab a couple of champagne coolies to celebrate.

“Right down Peachtree,” I repeated. He just looked at me. “Come on,” I urged. “Atlanta Braves? Ernie Johnson? The Eighties? That’s what Ernie would say any time a Braves pitcher threw a called strike right down the middle. You know, Peachtree Street. Atlanta. Surely you’ve heard ‘Right down Peachtree’ before.”

But he hadn’t. He allowed as how he’d heard of Chipper Jones and knew that the Braves were “really good or something,” but had never been much of a baseball fan. I couldn’t believe that something so iconic and pervasive from my youth was totally foreign to him. I mean, “Right down Peachtree” is as ubiquitous a phrase in my dialect as “Like it had eyes” and “Bullseye.”

I pondered this as we cleaned my harvest. As I did, it dawned on me for the first time just how much those three seemingly obscure words mean to me.

The Braves I grew up idolizing in the 1970s and ‘80s were far from the powerhouse teams of the 1990s and beyond. They were a perennial National League doormat, with the exception of the anomalous 1982 season when Joe Torre – yes, that Joe Torre – led them to the NL West Division crown. I can still name the entire starting lineup from my youth. The men who made up “America’s Team” were – and still are – the heroes of my youth, winners or not. With all due respect to Cubs fans, the Braves were my loveable losers. And despite the Braves’ smashing success over the past 20 years, it is the cellar dwellers of my youth that hold the spot nearest my heart.

Looking back, it seems that Ernie Johnson and the other Braves’ announcers weren’t just providing analysis and commentary on the games, but on my very youth as well. And that which has stuck with me most over the years, dating back to when the Braves wore those putrid powder puff blue uniforms on the road, is Ernie Johnson’s signature call, “Right down Peachtree!”.

Something else that dawned on me while my harvest twisted on the gambrel from the tugs and pulls of our primitive processing job was that the outdoors have provided me with some unforgettable “Right Down Peachtree” moments, too. Like the outstanding shot my wife made to take her first deer a few years ago. My brother-in-law’s awesome shot to take down his first buck. The first time my son hit the can with his BB gun and landed his first fish.

And, of course, the shot I made on a doe back on that warm January day, when the simple act of explaining to a friend what I’d said, and why, connected my past and my present in such a poignant way.

So now if you and I are ever together in the outdoors, you, too, will know why on those rare occasions when I connect on a long shot at a whitetail, make an impossible crossing shot on a green wing teal or thread my fishing lure perfectly between two rotting logs, I utter, “Right down Peachtree.” It’s a not-so-minor tribute to the Braves, my family, and all the other memories that walk quietly alongside me, so many years and miles from my youth.



(c) Roger Guilian 2011