Clinton, South Carolina, Saturday, December 8, 2018, 7:47 p.m.

I love the Army-Navy Game. It doesn’t matter if both teams have losing records (which Army doesn’t this year). It’s always hardfought. It always comes down to the end. Navy won 14 in a row, and now Army has won three straight. My late Uncle Cas was a career Army man, and that’s the reason I always root for Army. I like Navy, too. It’s just the American game.

A few days ago, I was at a nearby hamburger joint, talking about football, and a fellow said nobody cared about the Army-Navy Game.

I said, “I do. I love watching that game.”

He said, “I mean, nobody cares to bet on it.”

That’s when I noticed he had a stack of cards to be used for amusement purposes only.

Duh.

It’s been a busy week. The football coach at Clinton High School is out after four years. The Red Devils went 2-8 this year. Folks around here expect to win. I hate it came to this. Andrew Webb is a fine man and a great example to the young men who played for him. He is Clinton born and Clinton bred, and was gracious and classy in accepting the news. I wrote Andrew a note expressing that I was sorry it happened, and he replied to the effect that he wanted to continue coaching and would try to catch on somewhere else. I wish him the best.

In 2009, Clinton won the most recent of its eight state championships, and the head coach, Andy B. Young, was forced into retirement. It’s been one, long, downhill spiral since, and two young coaches have been caught in the tailspin. Both Scott King and Webb are models for American youth. At the same time, when I hear people say that this all-encompassing emphasis on winning takes the fun out of sports, I think what kind of sport is it that you mean? I once played football, and nothing is more fun than winning. I’d like to believe I see both sides. Winning is worth it. Losing isn’t. God loves the ones who persevere.

I left Clinton High School believing I could do anything. I found out I couldn’t, but I still have a good attitude. If anything has tempered my mindset, it is that a man (or a woman) should learn to live with himself if he never realizes his dreams, but should never give up on them. I hope to be aspiring to greatness right up to my last breath.

If I hadn’t played on championship football teams, I don’t think my perseverance would be so great.

I hate it’s come to this – in more ways than one – but I recognize that it has.

The worst kind of journalist is one who thinks he knows more than he does. I have tried to recognize that, while I may know a good bit about football, or baseball, or NASCAR, I don’t know more than the coach who watches his players every day. I don’t know as much about engines as the men who build engines. But I try to know as much as I can and seek the perspective of those who know more than I.

I just try to go somewhere and write what I see, whether it’s a great victory or an inglorious defeat.

Knowledge never runs out. I remember when I thought it was hard to write a story about a great event. Comparatively, that’s easy. What’s hard is to write a good story about a bad event.

Last night Clinton visited Laurens in basketball. The competition is intense when our county’s two public schools get together. The Raiders are two classes higher than the Red Devils – 5 A’s to 3 – but one school doesn’t react with arrogance and the other doesn’t accept subservience. It’s always hardfought. It’s always a slog.

It took me well into the wee hours – the late David Poole used to call it “oh-dark-30” long before there was a movie with a similar name – to crop and process the photos, type up a box and write a story. Then, after only a few hours’ sleep, I rose, dressed without shaving and showering, and took a mug of coffee along to watch 84 people run up and down Main Street in Laurens for five kilometers in the 19^th Reindeer Run. No one was shocked that a man named Matt Shock won. He crossed the finish line 55 seconds ahead of someone named Garrett Sponenberg. I didn’t talk to either. I was more interested in shooting cute photos of kids dressed up as reindeer … and running in the rain. A week earlier, I shot photos of a Christmas Parade in the rain. The South is getting washed away. The West is getting burnt up.

As Selma Hamrick used to say, whatever floats your boat.

 

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Lightning in a Bottle is now available in an audio version, narrated by Jay Harper.