By MONTE DUTTON

It was a perfect day in Orangeburg. Ten years ago, I watched another game there. That one was enjoyable, too.
I managed not to make one of those absentminded mistakes that strike me early in the morning. I posted a story I’d written the night before, showered and carefully selected appropriate clothing. Under my Red Sox hoody, I wore a jersey with my father’s number.
Waffle House coffee never tasted better. I shopped the signs and found gasoline for $2.55.

The state championship game at South Carolina State was exactly why I always go early. I chatted with a photographer from Columbia and the Barnwell bus driver. She was originally from Ohio but moved to Barnwell with her first husband. I remarked that the Warhorses’ buses were newer than the Red Devils, but I doubted it had much to do with which team would win.

The Clinton fans didn’t trail me by much. The gate was supposed to open at noon. When I got there, the lady on the other side said it was 12:30.

I knew Clinton would bring a crowd, but it started streaming in not long after I ambled around the boundaries of the field.
Truman Owens was watching in a wheelchair from behind an end zone. My coach, Keith Richardson, and I chatted about whether or not luck matters. He insists staunchly that it doesn’t. I agreed that it doesn’t exist in the long run.
Other veterans of state championships were there: Mike Owens and Jacques Gilliam of 1977, me and Jimmy Miller of ’75, along with others with whom I didn’t get a chance to reminisce.

My media colleagues trickled in. John Clayton from the Advertiser. Vic MacDonald from the Chronicle. Brian and Landon King of Lakelands Sports. Fletcher Pruitt Jr., who has been taking photos of Clinton High football since the late 1970s. Harold Nichols, sideline reporter of Red Devil radio on WPCC.
A high-school sideline has its own society. PC head football coach Steve Englehart watching from the end zone. Man of all Red Devil trades Jayson Glenn was walking the sideline. The team doctors. The cheerleaders.

Clinton’s 35-6 victory was truly a team effort. They all shared the work and reaped the profits.
The postgame celebration was an unusual experience for high-school football. It was a blur of smiles for cameras, S.C. High School Leaguers yelling “one more question, okay?” and “everybody’s got to get off the field because there’s another game!” Hellfire, it wasn’t until 7:30. I was back in Clinton by then.
I wandered around, trying to find someone who wasn’t already talking to a website and something , anything, all the others didn’t have.

I didn’t much mind the traffic jam in Columbia. Nothing bothered me. I was too busy thinking about what I was going to write. I didn’t feel like stopping at a drive-through and bought some crackers, peanut butter and a celebratory cardboard cylinder of butter-pecan ice cream at the Dollar General.
The songs that most moved me on the round trip were Tom Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down” and Toby Keith’s “I Love This Bar.” I promised to try to learn them down the road.

I had a lot of photos to go through. First I deleted the ones that were out-of-focus and too much like others, and entirely of the artificial turf. Turf photos occur when I’m shooting a player running toward the sideline and reach the point where I think he and his tacklers just might reach me. Then I went back through the remainder and chose the ones I was going to use and tinkered with them. My first post was a photo gallery on Instagram.

I started assembling the story but decided to finish Friday morning, which felt like a Saturday. I still stayed up late because I needed to savor what had happened on an historic day. I’m going to add another verse to “Go Big Red,” the song I started on a bus ride home 49 years ago. I played the current version on my trusty guitar.
I watched the highlights on the 11 o’clock newses, watching one while I taped another.
Apparently, I replayed the game in my sleep because the covers were askew and sheet separated from the mattress when I awakened.

I don’t recall the plays but awakened with bruises.
Meanwhile …
PC released the spring softball schedule of 52 games, 29 of them at home, it ends with the Blue Hose hosting the Big South Championship for the first time.
Presbyterian hosts the first 10 games and plays 42 times in the state.

In addition to USC Upstate, which earned last season’s automatic bid from the Big South, the Blue Hose will square off with two opponents that went to the NCAA Tournament last season, Cleveland State (Horizon League) and Boston University (Patriot League).
The top five teams in the conference standings will all be competing in Clinton for the Big South Championship, a four-day bracket that begins on May 7. The final team left standing will receive an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament, as the league title will be up for grabs on May 10.
Take a look at the schedule here.

“Every mile or so a sign proclaimed that Christ was coming soon, and I thought, well, man, He’d sure be disappointed if He did.” – Tom T. Hall, “Trip to Hyden”
Wellpilgrim.com is adjusting to the winter chill. The bounces of the balls are getting truer, and soon it’ll all be indoors.
Times are changing. I am aware of how irrelevant what I do for a living has become and thus how unimportant my efforts are. The readers appreciate them, but there aren’t enough of them. I doubt there ever will be again.

It’s what I do. It’s what I know.
Support the advertisers. They are all fine people who want their businesses associated with honest coverage of local sports.
In the off chance you’d like to read my novels and other books, they’re available on Amazon and many prominent bookseller sites.
You can read them on your phones and other devices for a modest cost. I make a bit more if you purchase the actual books, but what I mainly want is for folks to read them.
Most of the protagonists in my novels are combinations of memories and observations. Duh.

I am fascinated by likeable rogues. I knew a lot of them in NASCAR. The result is my only two novels that are related to each other, Lightning in a Bottle and Life Gets Complicated, both published in 2017.
Photo galleries are posted on Instagram @furmanatt and @laurenscountysports.
Thanks for putting up with me.