Clinton, South Carolina, Tuesday, September 17, 2019, 12:49 p.m.

One of the small attributes that has grown within me as I’ve aged is an attempt to minimize the effect of superstition in my life.

This sort of began with research for my third novel, Crazy of Natural Causes (2015). The story of Chance Benford required that I read the Bible, and while doing so and trying to think of it through the eyes of Benford, a disgraced Kentucky football coach of my invention, it occurred to me that much of religion is grounded in superstition. Deeply religious people perform dozens of rituals each day. They pray for people they don’t know. As they fade to sleep, they recite the names of innumerable people, deeply afraid that if they don’t, ruinous events are sure to ensue.

I still pray for people, using what little consideration I deserve from the Almighty, but they are those I love, cherish, and respect. I pray for general things such as peace, quiet, prosperity, and for powerful leaders to miraculously develop a lick of sense. I believe in the spiritual – warmth, sympathy, wisdom, justice – at the expense of ritual and superstition.

It’s made my modest prayers more enjoyable. The protagonist of Crazy of Natural Causes created for himself a Christian religion based on his own experiences. Though it may not have occurred to Chance Benford, he came to live his life in the words of Tom T. Hall:

Me and Jesus got our own thing going / Me and Jesus got it all worked out / Me and Jesus got our own thing going / We don’t need anybody to tell us what it’s all about.

(By the way, this came up in the aforementioned YouTube video.)

Then along came Friday. Friday the 13^th.

It was normal until about 5 p.m., at which point I left early to write about a football game in Simpsonville. From the moment I backed out of the garage, things got jangled. My house is at the end of a 200-yard dirt road where gravel was once visible. About half a large tree was lying across the road, making it complicated to get to the state highway. First I backed my truck all the way back to my house, which is when I realized the full usefulness of the video screen that switches on when I shift into reverse. Then I drove through a gap in the barbed-wire fence that enclose my yard and made my way to the highway through about a half mile of overgrown pasture past my mother’s house to the road. I made several calls while driving to Simpsonville, but it was after 5, and all I left were messages.

Then I had an enjoyable dinner at a restaurant that isn’t available in Laurens County and went to Hillcrest High School, where the game was delayed an hour, not by fire on the mountain, but by lightning in the air. To kill the time, outside the stadium gate, I got my guitar out and videotaped myself singing an old country song, which also wound up in the aforementioned (and linked) video. I don’t believe anyone else even noticed.

The game wasn’t over until past 11, and I didn’t get home until midnight, and the trip back to my house was considerably more difficult. In darkness, the pastures seemed much more overgrown. I had some difficulty finding my house. By the time I got through working – downloading (or is it uploading?) about 100 photos, cropping, adjusting, and selecting the best 20 or so, typing in the stats, writing the story, putting together a story on another game – it was 3 a.m. (no longer Friday the 13^th, though), and I was so keyed up I watched the second half of a replay of the football game between Washington State and Houston. I went to sleep after 4.

On Saturday, I got lots of messages and texts from tree services willing to clear the road, but it didn’t actually get done until Monday. Subsequent trips to nearby civilization were taking in my old truck because, even though it is quite attractive, I was more willing to get it scratched in bushes in what were once fields than I was with the No. 1 ride. I took a ride on the wild side with my 20-year-old Honda Accord on Monday morning to go take pictures of a county councilman being sworn in.

(You can read such pulsating journalism at GoLaurens/GoClinton each and every day.)

Oh, yeah. I awakened in the wee hours of Saturday morning sweating, at which point I discovered that the batteries in my house’s thermostat had expired. This only happens when it is sweltering or frigid. Amazingly, I was able to find some unused AAA batteries, and soon Rayovac decreed that there would be air conditioning again. Maybe Rayovac was the answer to my unsaid prayers. Maybe Jesus anticipated my hardship.

There I go, getting superstitious again. Surely Jesus has better things to do.

My square one is this: I don’t believe in superstition, but many people I respect do. So, just in case, I’m wearing the same clothes to the Furman game on Saturday because the Paladins won with them at the first home game. This is based on the notion that the football team’s uniforms had nothing to do with the game’s outcome but my uniform did.

To borrow from Tom T. again, I reckon I’m just “a hairy-legged soul lost out in sin.”

 

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My eighth novel is called Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

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