By MONTE DUTTON

On Tuesday, I spent about an hour watching Clinton High School in a spring football practice.

After taking more photos than I could possibly need, I walked across the field and decided not to leave. I sat down on a tiny aluminum stand – I’m guessing it maybe has usefulness for band practice in addition to providing a place for me to sit – and went back in time.

Maybe it was the cicadas humming. No wonder they don’t live but a month.

Even though it has been nearly a half century since I played football, I still know what it feels like, what it smells like and what it sounds like. I remember how awful it was when it was cool and overcast the first few days in shorts, shirts and helmets, because of the knowledge that the heat would be double hell the first day in pads.

I can’t do it, but I did it.

So I’m idly watching boys handing off and playing catch, larger ones waddling under cages and working on their footwork, learning how to block with no wasted movement, and at the same time, I’m imagining antiquity.

It’s possible that I do what I’ve been doing for most of 40 years because I miss what I did when I was a boy myself.

I remember, when I was on the ninth-grade team, the experience of scrimmaging the varsity. It was as if we had been herded onto one side of the field as a pride of lions was unleashed on the other. I didn’t think I would ever compete with those guys, but the years passed, I got better and rose to the challenge because there wasn’t any other choice.

A lot has changed. We didn’t practice football in May. We didn’t play seven-on-sevens all summer. We worked on farms and in cotton mills and for the city. When we did get around to practicing, it was 3-1/2 hours at least twice a day. The middle special-teams practice didn’t count.

Nowadays, to make up for the fewer reps in August, high-school teams get together as best they’re allowed as often as possible.

Another change is that much more of a sport is organized. When I was a kid, a pickup baseball game could be played most any day in the summer from dawn till dusk at the field behind Providence School in Lydia Mill.

The public swimming pools have been filled in, the roller rinks uprooted.

Video games were rudimentary, didn’t have any video, and were mainly played at bowling alleys and beer joints.

A lot is better. A lot is worse. I paid my utility bills today, and I’m not planning to turn off the air conditioning.

Charley Pride sang it best: I wonder could I live there anymore.

I just read where eight Walmarts are closing. My God. We have hit rock bottom.

Baseball, at least played between schools, is winding down but far from over.

Laurens High (23-6) is 3-0 in the Class 4A high-school playoffs and resting until Friday at 6:30 p.m., when the Raiders will play one of the three teams they’ve already beaten.

Northwestern (8-21) visits Greenwood (17-11) Monday night (note: the Eagles won, 10-0), and Greenwood visits Catawba Ridge (24-4) on Wednesday, and the winner of that games comes to Ed Prescott Field on Friday, where Laurens has two shots to win the district championship and advance to the Upstate finals.

The competition gets tougher as the playoffs continue. Laurens has beaten Greenwood three times. All three were close, the most recent 1-0 in nine innings. The Raiders had lost three straight over two seasons to Catawba Ridge until Friday, when they won, 4-3. Laurens’ playoff opener was a victory over Northwestern, 8-0.

Presbyterian College (25-22, 15-6 Big South) has soared to the top of the conference with four straight victories and six out of seven. What makes it doubly impressive is that the way the schedule unfolded, the Blue Hose faced all the contenders late.

PC has a busy week ahead but doesn’t close its conference schedule until currently fifth-place UNC Asheville visits Clinton on May 16-18. Between now and then, the Blue Hose are auditing the Southern Conference, facing Wofford (30-15) at home on Tuesday at 6 p.m., and The Citadel (17-28) at home on Friday (6) and Saturday (4) and in Charleston on Sunday at 1. The Blue Hose visit Western Carolina (23-22) on Tuesday, May 14, at 5.

Ex-PC player Dalton Reeves, who played sparingly for South Carolina (32-15) until he hit two home runs in a 19-14 victory over his former school, has become a sensation for the Gamecocks.

Reeves, a senior from Lugoff, is hitting .297 with seven home runs and 20 runs batted in.

Chris Veach, another ex-Blue Hose and a junior from Chapin, has a 4.13 earned run average and three saves out of the USC bullpen. Veach’s record is 3-1.

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