By Lynn Peisner

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Lewis Grizzard, guru to brainy Bubbas everywhere, stirs up strong reactions around here. The short but barbed sentences of his columns that went out to 450 newspapers speak volumes of truth to his followers who still routinely write into the AJC’s Vent lamenting that there aren’t more writers like him keeping the region’s flavor alive in black-and-white newspaper prose.

A lot has changed in the world of mass-media publishing since his death at age 47 in 1994. That’s another story. But love or hate the self-proclaimed un-modern man, you wouldn’t even know he was gone to catch actor Bill Oberst Jr.’s one-man show portraying Grizzard, which opens at Stone Mountain’s ART Station for a six-day run starting Jan. 13.

Since 1999, Oberst has been using Grizzard’s own words (and clothes) to impersonate and interpret the man who turned homespun wisdom into a nightclub act years before Jeff Foxworthy's "Redneck" schtick gripped the nation.

We spoke to him about the act and about the challenge of keeping Grizzard alive and well for so long.

Q: What were the origins of the show?

A: Dedra (Grizzard’s fourth wife, who was married to him for four days before he died) found me through what my mother calls ‘a God thing.’ I put on a test show in Georgetown, S.C. She and Steve Enoch (Grizzard’s manager) were skeptical. Dedra was worried no one could play Lewis convincingly or that we might be cheapening his image and legacy.

But when she showed up, people crowded around her at intermission and told her how much they loved Lewis. Dedra cried. A month later I'm buying shoe trees for Lewis' Gucci loafers.

Q: You wear his shoes?

A: I do. While I’m in Atlanta doing the show, I stay in Dedra’s basement. She’s still got loads of his stuff. His office stuff, announcements and awards he had. It was really odd at first to be that close to the person I’m playing. I had a shirt I used for the first five years of the show and it got a little threadbare and I said, can I go through some of Lewis’ old shirts? She said sure.

That’s never going to happen with Mark Twain (who Oberst also portrays). I wear his actual shoes and I appear a lot of times on the exact same stages he did in those exact same loafers, saying the same words. It helps the creative process. I was a fan of his but I didn’t know him. And now I’ve gotten to feel so close to him.

Q: Is there anyone else who comes close to emulating him nowadays?

A: The only national contemporary I can think of is Garrison Keillor. People who grew up in the South and had the values of the South, he validated them. And his stories of Moreland, Ga., remind me of Lake Wobegon. Lewis told his fans that what you have experienced in your Southern small town is more than OK. There are good things there that we’re losing by losing small towns. That’s the core of his message.

The question is, of course, once people who remember Lewis are dead, will this show have any currency then? I don’t know the answer to it. But his fans really miss him. He filled some void in Southern culture that hasn’t really been filled since.

Q: He encountered criticism during his life for being anti-feminist and racist. Do you address that in the show?

A: Yes. He made jokes about all of that stuff. He was representative of Southern men of his time. The way he saw it was that women didn’t want to be women anymore, they wanted to be men. Which I think really threw his generation off. I talk about that a lot in the second act.

He has said, ‘I ain’t got no problem with women. I don’t think they ought to vote or drive, but other than that… .' He was joking. Partly. One of his friends told me that Lewis didn’t consider lying to a woman lying. If you lie to a man, it was lying, and that was your honor at stake, but lying to a woman was not really lying. He said that privately to one of his friends.

The main issue in Lewis’ life and in his writings was male-female relationships. He said he thought women should be the perfect combination of Gina Lollobrigida, Mother Teresa and Betty Crocker. Dedra knew Lewis' soft side and Steve knew his hard side. I draw on them both to create my version of him.

IF YOU GO

"Lewis Grizzard: In His Own Words" by Bill Oberst Jr. 10:30 a.m. Jan. 13. 8 p.m. Jan. 14-16. 3 p.m. Jan. 17. Meet Lewis Grizzard’s widow, Dedra, during a meet-and-greet following the performances on Jan. 14 and Jan. 15. At noon Jan. 18, a $10 program includes lunch, show excerpt and Q & A. The rest of the shows are $27 for adults. $22 for seniors and students. ART Station, 5384 Manor Drive, Stone Mountain. 770-469-1105. www.artstation.org . The Jan. 18 matinee is $10 and includes a box lunch.