By MONTE DUTTON

Duty called me to Greenwood on Tuesday. Specifically, it called me to the UPS Store to return some equipment to its provider. Options were about equally limited. I could drive to Spartanburg, Simpsonville or Greenwood, all about equidistant. I chose the city across the lake because I’d rather drive a familiar highway than what were once known as superhighways.

I’ve driven Hwy. 72 thousands of times, though fairly seldom these days. Usually it’s for high-school ballgames. My first full-time job was at the newspaper over there back when friendly fellows in the back pasted up the pages and used copy transported to them in pneumatic tubes.

Pneumatic tubes are, of course, tubes that are pneumatic, which means they are operated by air or gas under pressure. I mainly use them now to zoom money inside the bank from the drive-through mechanism.

I thought of the summertime night over 40 years ago when I was riding behind a white Toyota that wrecked about 100 yards in front of me. It was close to midnight, I was driving back to Clinton after writing about a Greenwood Pirates minor-league baseball game, and I suspect the driver of the tiny Toyota – most Toyotas were tiny back then – may have been intoxicated. I watched as the car drifted into the grass, and its driver overcorrected, and the little car began barrel-rolling, its headlights lighting up the trees on either side of the road. I slowed quickly, trying to avoid the shards of window glass, and pulled over. The Toyota was resting on its roof in the middle of the highway. The driver was climbing out the window, relatively uinjured.

I reckon he was limber. He asked if I’d seen a pack of cigarettes lying anywhere. I’d say I was at least a decade shy of my first mobile phone, so he and I waited until the authorities arrived, and I continued on my way.

A hobby of mine is figuring out what is located where something else used to be. I do this on Poinsett Highway almost every time I drive up to Furman University for a ballgame.

Greenwood Civic Center, where the Lander Senators used to play, consists entirely of a sign. The baseball stadium is still there, though in a diminished state. The old concrete grandstands of what once was a dirt race track have now been flattened. They looked like ancient ruins when I lived there in 1981-82, but the first stock car race I ever saw was there when I was roughly age six. The building that once housed Starnes Club Forrest, a popular venue that provided a jukebox and frosty refreshment, is still standing.

Greenwood High School’s football stadium is now named for Julius W. “Pinky” Babb, who was still coaching back then. Clinton’s first modern state championship – this is if 51 years ago can still be deemed modern – was won there, 32-0, over Hanahan, which the Red Devils defeated for the state baseball title less than a month ago. At the time, Clinton fans were disgruntled at what they perceived to be insufficient coverage from a nearby newspaper. When the game began, a large banner had been hung from the scoreboard.

GO TO HELL, GREENVILLE NEWS!

What do you know? It did.

The Pirates, a Class A member of the South Atlantic League (previously the Western Carolinas League), undoubtedly drew more flies than people and didn’t last in Greenwood much longer than I did. Two of my friends were pitching coach Spin Williams, who held that position in the majors for a while, and general manager Pat O’Conner, who wound up becoming chief operating officer of minor-league baseball nationwide. At the end of homestands, we held fish fries in the concession stand that drifted way into the wee hours, with fish provided by the groundskeeper and “fixins,” quite a few liquid and frosty, by Pat. We’d play country music, and I’d sing along. One night, Spin said, “Hey, M.D., bet you could sing the national anthem.”

“Hmm. Let’s see,” I said, and could. The next homestand began with me singing it before the game. Thus was born one of my first slogans: “A man will hit notes drunk he wouldn’t try sober.”

As the late Charley Pride sang so beautifully, I wonder could I live there anymore.

Please take a look at my current works of fiction, Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and The Latter Days, both available (along with many previous books), at MonteDutton.net.