Clinton, South Carolina, Saturday, November 2, 3:50 p.m.

I don’t get out much. The last time I spent a night in a motel room was in March. My road trips are to places like Piedmont (twice!), Simpsonville, and Greer, where the Piedmont Municipal Power Agency resides.

A commute to Greenville after four hours’ sleep is in order when Furman is at home. Then I hightail it back home to edit the obituaries and compile an arrest report. Were I in the Cayman Islands, I would have to go online to look up the demises and transgressions. The farthest I have been from home this year is Knoxville, Tennessee.

Easley, home of the Green Wave, was the site of my latest adventure. I managed to head up early, after snapping some photos of Clinton High’s playoff tennis victory, so that I could do what I always try to do, which is have a pregame meal at a restaurant that does not exist in Laurens County. Applebee’s may not seem like much, but there’s not one here, I haven’t been to one in several years, and I found my fajitas damned tasty.

The four-lane that runs through Easley en route to Clemson is where many of the restaurants are, and it occurred to me that it looks a lot older than the last time I was there. I wanted to try some joint that was unique, but I didn’t have the time to look any longer.

Laurens defeated Easley, 63-29, with nothing at all on the line except playoff preparation, and I thought I wrote reasonably well in the wee hours after returning home, going through about 90 photos to find 22 that were satisfactory and four or five others to save for file use. Good games write themselves. Bad games are hard.

While patrolling the sideline and my cell phone, I learned that Laurens Academy was up 58-14 … at half. The final was 64-14. Meanwhile, in Woodruff, Clinton played a game that was apparently relatively sane, but lost, 17-7.

Next week, 8-1 Laurens is at good, old K.C. Hanna Stadium, against Blythewood in the first round of the Class 5A playoffs, while Clinton, which eked out a 4-6 record, will visit powerful Camden because that’s what teams that barely make the playoffs have to do in the first round. Two years ago, the Red Devils almost won such a game, but Seneca pulled it out, 18-14. Laurens Academy’s eight-man team did not make the postseason, but all three teams in the county are better than last year. Laurens went from 4-7 to 8-1, Clinton from 2-8 to 4-6 and Laurens Academy from 3-7 to 4-5. Last year the combined record was 9-22; this year to date, it’s 16-12, thanks mostly to the powerful Raiders. I

I had never watched an 8-man football game until last year. I think it might be better if the whole game was played between the hash marks. It looks a little like soccer with points. Lots of points. The Crusaders scored 134 in their last two wins.

Laurens being at home and Laurens Academy being in their homes might gave me upwards of five hours’ sleep next week to savor before the Paladins engage visitors from Virginia Military Institute.

The most enjoyable part of my job is taking photos of cute kids running around, such as Thursday night at Boo in the Park, which became Boo at The Ridge because it was cold and rainy out. The next most fun thing is to talk, gossip, joke, and tell stories on sidelines and before and after events take place. Executive sessions are awful wastes of time, but the waste is lessened by fellowship while elected officials deliberate in secret for an hour about “personnel matters” and other transactions that qualify for ostensibly legal privacy. Not too long ago, I made the mistake of bringing up the subject of South Carolina football coach Will Muschamp, not knowing that his greatest fan ever was sitting at the other end of the courtroom with ears at least as as acute as the average Trump partisan. Those folks make jackrabbits seem deaf.

I’d rather know the truth even if I can’t write it yet, and the amount of time I spend that might seem wasteful is probably more valuable than the information presented in full view, sanitized for protection. It’s ironic that much of the best information starts out between the lines I actually write.

I used to write about ballgames from the press box, but now I have a camera and know somewhat how to use it. I take a few notes here and there, secure in the knowledge that a vast array of statistics will be in my in-box when I get home.

Last night an assistant coach allowed as how a line in my story the previous week had made him laugh out loud, and that’s mainly what I’m in it for. I told a couple of players that the team across the way would be smarter, once down 28-7, to quit filling the air with incompletions and minimize the humiliation by running the clock.
But who am I to say? Easley got as close as 35-21 for 1 minute, 42 seconds in the third quarter. Laurens then scored four quick touchdowns.

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