By MONTE DUTTON

The coming season provides a potential vista as gorgeous as the one at Paladin Stadium late Saturday evening. Bright skies, glorious sunshine, frivolity all about.

Clay Hendrix wasn’t pleased with the Paladins’ FanFest, but, after all, it was a fest. The band was playing the fight song, not to mention the unofficial numero duo, Paul Simon’s “Call Me Al,” which, by the way, I love. I’d also like occasional flourishes of the Have Gun, Will Travel (“Paladin, Paladin, where do you roam?”) theme, but then I wouldn’t get to play it on my guitar in the parking lot.

I mean, the beloved young basketball coach was perched uneasily in a dunking booth. Bob Richey took on more water than the Andrea Doria, but he was relentlessly buoyant.

Where else does one get a chance to watch a man in full armor play cornhole? Or a young girl in grade school tip-tapping a soccer ball about with the cheerful aid of fully-matured Paladins?

As anyone with a lick of sense knows, the great appeal of cornhole is that a horseshoe to the head is far more painful. The ones who have enjoyed a lifetime of horseshoes are more likely to have lost the aforementioned lick. Neither game is as dangerous as the Indianapolis 500, or the one played later a few yards away.

My thoughts were a bit bleached from the draining effects of the sun but buoyed by a big stats day. The year-to-date total of hugs roughly doubled.

Being in that place with those surroundings energized me. Since Paladin Stadium opened in 1981, it has been purpled up. It opened stately, and now it is joyous. Every time I go, on the drive back to Clinton, I find myself humming, duh-DUH-duh-duh-duh -DUH-duh, duh-duh-duh-DUH …

Paladins, Paladins, where do you roam?

I spent a while on the defensive side of the field, realizing that I’ve sat on the visitors’ side only once, and that was when I met a great-nephew who arrived on an R.A. Day bus.

When I ventured near my Clinton connection, Tommy Spangler, he yelled my name to a bevy of safeties, informed them that I love Furman and that he loves me. I muttered, “Uh, I love you, too, Tommy.”

Awkward, but true. He is a good man.

Spangler led Presbyterian College to its only winning season since 2014, then was fired in favor of a man who didn’t believe in punting at all or kicking off deep. The Blue Hose are 3-19 since, and if Clinton were in England, everyone in town would ask in relation to the hometown school, “Are you daft?” Since PC is in South Carolina, they ask, “Have you lost your mind?”

Awkward, but true.

On Sept. 9, if I stopped by Bailey Memorial Stadium to take a few photos, then gunned the pickup in the direction of Williams-Brice, it would be, in football terms, changing dimensions, stumbling into a time tunnel, or, shooting for some food, and up from the ground come a bubbling crude. Oil, that is. Texas tea.

But I’m not. I’ll have a Friday-night, high-school hangover, and I’ll value sleeping as long as I want to before I sing the fight song all the way to Columbia.

Furman is my natural high. On Friday night, I watched Laurens lose, 55-9, and word arrived of Clinton winning, 50-28. In the wee hours, I processed and tinkered with photos, wrote the stories, slept four hours, worked some more and left the house with the Red Sox leading the Yankees, 6-0, the fourth inning. That helped.

While Richey was bouncing around in a tub of water, I was figuratively bathing in the Fountain of Youth. Hanging out at a football practice is pure fun. It makes me remember a time when I could actually keep my feet moving and break down! I’ve known Clay longer than I’ve know Tommy, and I think both of them like it when they see me coming because they know I am older. Both are men with whom I can joke around, and as Arthur Bach once said, Isn’t fun the greatest thing you can have?

This is pure, sportswriter’s, know-just-enough-to-be-dangerous, look-at-the-forest-not-the-trees logic, but Furman looks proud and confident. The bodies are strong and quick, but the minds are intelligent and speak the language of ambition fluently.

The Paladins look like a football team. Looks can be deceiving. As the late, great Charley Frank Pride sang, The easy part’s over now, and the hard part begins (Bill Rice, Jerry Foster).

Just do it.

The season’s upon us. Help me cover the county — and my beloved Furman Paladins — by sending a check to DHK Sports, P.O. Box 768, Clinton, S.C. 29325 or becoming a patron here. Support our advertisers and tell them we sent you. It’s going to be fun. Help make it, uh, funner.

I also make ends meet with the books I write. There’s something here to strike your fancy. They don’t cost much. Buy one or two or five.

I’m hosting an Open Mic at Fiesta Grande (see the ad) in Clinton on Wednesday, Aug. 23, at 7 p.m.