By MONTE DUTTON

I lost a buddy and a traveling companion when Jimmy Mac died on Friday the 15^th, which must be bad luck in March this year, no doubt a result of Leap Year.

I feared for his health in the back of my mind. Suppressed it, a shrink might say. Maybe repressed it. Concern made me press some kind of way.

The last time I saw him was a surprise party for his and Inez’s 50^th wedding anniversary. I drove to somewhere on the far side of Winnsboro, got to know some of the Clio mafia and drove back home.

By for-real name, Jim McLaurin, brother of at least Lauch and “Cheese,” and I became chums at an ACC baseball tournament where I was stringing for AP and Jim was steady on the scene for The Stehut Peppuh. It was an uproarious gathering. In one game, two teams almost combined for double digits in runs, hits and errors. We were rooting for it. I launched a press-box cliché that found its way into The State.

Meanwhile, lost in all this frivolity …

I wandered into the Wonderland of NASCAR, and Jimmy Mac was already there. When The State occasionally turned him loose, I’d favor him over the late Lewis Grizzard.

Back in the 1990s, occasionally major sporting events liked having sportswriters there. Big papers sent teams. Such was the case with The State at Darlington. A young sports staffer mainly accustomed to the local tennis beat joined Jimmy Mac at Darlington. He reasoned that the simpler task would be the Busch Series (a name many years removed now) race, and he would handle the IROC event (now also long removed), where the similarly prepared vehicles didn’t have numbers on them.

Jimmy Mac sat nearby, available for advice and assistance. The young reporter – I wish I could remember her name – seemed not to be paying much attention, but Jimmy Mac figured the race didn’t require anything too long, and she was probably just going to rely on the postrace quotes.

The title of the event was the Mark II Vans 200.

Finally, she leaned over and said, “Excuse me, Jim, but when does the van race start?”

(Now that I think of it, I’m surprised NASCAR never had one.)

We were sitting on the beds in a motel room in Eden, N.C., the only place I ever occupied near Martinsville, Va., which is just across the state line, when Aaron Boone hit the home run off the late Tim Wakefield, a knuckleballer who had no idea where the ball was going when he let it go. I have never gone through analysis, but I have researched the matter enough to self-diagnose my chief neurosis as the Boston Red Sox.

I didn’t say a word, got up and proceeded to drive aimlessly through the surrounding hills, trying to make sure the world was still turning. When I returned, Jim had his reading glasses on, a Miller at his elbow, and was working a crossword.

“I’m glad you came back when you did,” he said. “I was just about to get on the phone and ask if anybody had heard tell of a fat man jumping into the Dan River.”

The Red Sox won it all the next year.

We started sharing rooms on the road because Jimmy Mac had a habit of forgetting to make arrangements. One summer he stayed in a Mennonite motel in Michigan, which I would have loved to see. I think he also lodged at the Andy Griffith Inn in Mount Airy before we started hooking up in the same places. I just started making sure I reserved rooms with two beds.

Jimmy Mac liked Miller High Lifes and Camel cigarettes. We’d find common ground – we were not politically aligned – and solve the world’s problems before I’d do something close to pass out. I’d generally make sure to turn off the TV, but at some point, I’d hear newsreels of the Nazi war machine loudly overrunning Poland. I peered out from under the covers to find him comfortably asleep, with one of those little motel cups, half full of The Champagne of Beers, balanced perfectly on his tummy.

There once was a time when The History Channel had history on it.

We both got to all but know our mamas and our papas in the flesh instead of the anecdote. We both knew country when it wasn’t cool. Jimmy Mac met my mother one time, and they hit it right off. He came from the sticks, she from the mill village. Many sportswriters — fewer and fewer actually write this day and time — grew up in Westchester and went to Syracuse.

For the life of me, I can’t feel sad. Then again, I don’t often shed a tear of sorrow until the most unlikely of times, months later at the least.

Jimmy Mac was a good man who always made me smile and often made me laugh. I told him he had no idea how fine a writer he was, and deep in his soul, he he may have taken pride in it. I reckon he was like David Pearson, who wasn’t really shy. Pearson just thought if folks couldn’t tell how great he was, life was too short to tell them.

That’s how Jimmy Mac was.

He was a keen observer. When we were in the same interview, he reminded me of Lt. Columbo, that is, if the police inspector had grown up in Clio.

Here I’ve written this long tribute to one of the better friends I’ve ever had, and I just realized I don’t know of a single photo of the two of us together.

Once a merry crowd was contemplating life in an Anniston, Ala., motel bar the night before a Talladega race. At some point, Jeff Owens stood up and said, “I gotta go to sleep. There’s a race to write about tomorrow.”

“Aw, don’t run off,” Jimmy Mac said. “We gonna cut a watermelon here directly.”

Will work for food, but contributions would be better. They’re both good and good for me.

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