Clinton, South Carolina, Sunday, November 10, 2019, 9:17 a.m.

The best part of writing is the random observations along the way. I get more from bumping into someone on a sideline – not literally; the last time that happened, a guy on the chain crew backpedaled faster than I and stepped on my foot, and I went down in a heap, and heaps, like hangovers, hurt more than they used to – and talking about something that lingers longer than what I’m obligated to observe.

Sometimes the day itself is the inspiration, and creativity flows out of the environment. Saturday was such a day.

It was crisp and bright. The leaves had changed, and the brilliant greens had given way to the reds, browns, yellows and oranges. It was not cold enough to shiver but cold enough to enliven the nerve endings.

As I’ve gotten older, somehow I’ve gotten more attentive to trees, skies, and sunsets. Sometimes my camera is around my neck because I’m trying to take a photo of a high school kid running the football, and I look up and take a photo of a full moon hanging above the stadium lights. I like full moons, too.

My nephew, a Clemson fan as religious about the Tigers as I am about the Furman Paladins, said to me, “We gotta get you to a Tiger game.”

“I appreciate it, Ray,” I said, “but the TV is fine.”

At Furman University, I go up early, even after four hours’ sleep from the Friday-night high school football experience, sip a small vat of coffee on the way to campus, north of Greenville, and hobnob with close friends who would be closer if I saw them anywhere else. There’s a large tent and delicious food. The band marches by, playing the fight song. Before everyone makes his and her way to the stadium across the street, shot glasses filled with a stern purple liquid are distributed, and everyone participates in a decidedly secular communion, repeating a cheer that dates back to a little man with a big cigar who used to lead it after mounting the cheerleader stand. Dr. John Edwin Johns was then the president of the university.

FU one time!

FU two times!

FU three times!

FU all the time!

The world is full of acronyms nowadays. Ours is FUATT.

It’s a perfect cheer, slightly naughty without being overtly offensive.

At each home game, I have a conversation with either someone I don’t know or I haven’t seen in decades. On Saturday, it was Jeff Blankenship, a hero of the Paladins national championship in 1988. I wasn’t in Pocatello, Idaho, but I had a party at my house to watch it on TV and I remember Blankenship’s pivotal interception with the clarity I would have had if I’d been there.

A football game is like the subtitle of Ladislav Farago’s book about General George Patton: Ordeal and Triumph.

The first half was ordeal. Furman struggled with the visiting Keydets of Virginia Military, much improved this year but still ultimately inferior. The second half was triumph. The Paladins won, 60-21. Once it was 22-21. At halftime, it was 32-21.

Occasionally, the ordeal continues, as in three weeks ago, when The (Hated) Citadel pulled an upset in the rain, wind, and cold. I wasn’t worth a damn for a week, but the Paladins, three weeks later, are 7-3, 5-1 in the Southern Conference, and headed next to Spartanburg to play Wofford for the conference championship.

The ordeal continued all night for Gamecock fans, who lost to Appalachian State on Saturday in a game that didn’t look at all like an upset. I know how they feel. The Citadel. The damned Citadel.

Many took photographs. I was “tagged” in several. With my trusty Canon, the one that had contained 160 shots of football players (25 I deemed worth using) at the Laurens playoff game the night before, I was obsessed with beauty. The changing leaves. Paris Mountain behind the visiting stands. The team running between the lines of the band.

All hail the White and Purple, floating on high, hear shouts of triumph echo through the sky, buh-BUH, buh-BUH-buh-buh-buh-BUH-buh-buh …

When I’d pulled into the lot, immediately the atmosphere put me into something of a trance. I got my mini-guitar out and started playing because that’s what I like to do when I am very happy or very sad.

I piddled around on the theme of the TV show of my boyhood, Have Gun, Will Travel, whose hero was aptly named.

Paladin, Paladin, where do you roam? Paladin, Paladin, far, far from home …

I think the song has two verses. I managed to combine them into one. I guess I’ve got something to memorize this week.

Bernard Durham is going to call me from northern Virginia sometime soon.

“Hey, Monte, who is this Hamp Sisson?”

He’s the recently emerging quarterback who has stepped into the breach. He has a name I’d like to use for a character in a novel.

Oh, by the way, one of my duties when I got home was to throw together a story on Presbyterian, the college here in town, winning its first game of the season. Everything went well. The football team I love won big. The ones I like did, too.

The crowds at Paladin Stadium aren’t as big. Furman is competing nowadays against a half-dozen games (at least) on TV. If the weather stinks, some are apparently unwilling to sit through it and risk seeing The (Hated) Citadel win.

Even that was worth it, as much as I hate to admit it.

Bernard: “I heard Paul Johannesen was there.”

Me: “Yep. I bet I hadn’t seen him in thirty years.”

The theme of Cheers comes to mind:

You wanna go where everybody knows you name.

 

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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.