By MONTE DUTTON

I wonder if I will live to see the elimination of humanity in everything. God, I hope not.

When word broke that WLBG is apparently signing off for the last time at the end of the month, it took me by specific but not general surprise. It’s the way of the world. I doubt I’ll last much longer.

I thought about Mike Hughes, the latest in a line of troopers who has spoken humanly into the WLBG broadcast mic. Listening to ballgames on the station has almost spanned my life. When I was a kid, the station was our own private ESPN. It was ahead of its time right up to the moment time passed it by.

The longtime owner, Bill Hogan, broadcast Presbyterian College football and Furman University basketball. Larry Gar, the Dean of WCL announcers (and the only), treated the Greenwood Braves as if they were the Atlanta ones. He was everywhere, sending in spring-training reports from Florida and day-after football broadcasts from Ware Shoals. Jeff Singer hit the road most nights to bring NAIA District 6 basketball to the listening audience.

At the time, I kept statistics at Clinton High School games and tagged along with Singer to help him. That’s why I have memories of the old gyms of PC, Newberry, Erskine and Lander.

Going with friends to Leroy Springs Gymnasium, now the PC student center, was as much fun as the county fair.

Gar was a character. When I played football, and Clinton High was progressing through the playoffs, every Friday was Red Devil Day. Gar taped brief interviews with every player, and WLBG ran them throughout the day. When Gar interviewed me, he seemed more interested in talking about how pretty my mother was than any thoughts of mine on the upcoming game.

It made sense. My mother was far prettier than I was good. When I went to sleep last night, I reminisced about it with her in the hereafter.

WLBG-FM was strong. One summer my father and I delivered a trailer full of cattle somewhere in the middle of the Blue Ridge Mountains and listened to Gar broadcasting the Greenwood Braves all the way. It was worth it.

In 1972, Meadowbrook Park in Greenville had nearly burned to the ground. The following season, for only a year, the team’s descendant fielded a team in Orangeburg. The Orangeburg team was managed by the famously erratic Jimmy Piersall. My dad and I were listening to the Greenwood Braves playing the Orangeburg Dodgers. The press box was on the roof of the home dugout.

On a close play at the plate, Piersall came out to argue. Gar described the scene. He had a Brooklyn accent that would have made Lou Costello envious.

“Piersall’s making a fool of himself! That play wasn’t even close, schweet’aht!” Gar yelled.

Piersall, who once hit a home run and ran the bases backward while playing for the New York Mets, headed back to the dugout and overheard Gar’s harsh review of his behavior. He pointed at Gar and yelled some untoward language.

“Oh, no,” Gar said. “Piersall’s coming after me!

“Jimmy, don’t take another step. I’ll sue you! Ahhhahhhahhh!”

I assume the minor-league manager was attempting to strangle Gar. Programming from Orangeburg was interrupted.

“We’ll return to our coverage of Greenwood Braves baseball, but for now, enjoy this music from Mitch Miller. Let’s all sing along with Mitch!”

Decades later, Gar owned up to the story. His version was funnier than mine.

As a high-school senior, I had decided I was going to enroll at Furman University and listened to most of Hogan’s broadcasts of the Paladins of Joe Williams. His broadcast partner was Dr. John Block, who would soon become my favorite history professor.

The Paladins were playing in Richmond and almost pulled off a miracle victory. Trailing by two with just a couple of seconds left, a Furman player named Steve Whittington stole the inbounds pass and laid it in. Dr. Block was standing under the basket, waiting to conduct the postgame interview with Williams.

Hogan described the scene. “The basket’s good, and he may have been fouled. John, was Whit fouled?”

“Well, Bill, he’s standing right here. Whit, were you fouled?” Block asked.

“Yeah, man, I was fouled!”

Whittington missed the free throw. The Paladins lost in triple overtime. (Maybe double. It was a long time ago.)

I saw John at the Southern Conference Tournament a couple weeks ago, and we reminisced about that 50-year-old tale. He remarked that they were ahead of their time. Nothing like that ever happened on the radio back then.

In the 1980s, Sandy Cruickshanks and I broadcast Clinton and PC games on WPCC. One night, Clinton’s playoff game ended before the Laurens game did. Sandy and I were sitting in the parking lot of The Clinton Chronicle, where my car was, and the Raiders were in overtime against Westside. At the end, all the Rams had to do was convert the extra point to win the game.

Doug Holliday described it. “There’s the snap, the hold …”

The world’s most enthusiastic analyst, King Dixon, screamed, “Miiiisss it!”

I said to Sandy, “We can barely hear the game in Clinton, but they just heard King Dixon in Chicago.”

Hogan, who lived in Clinton and had children with whom I went to school, was announcing a PC football game. Unlike most of the broadcasters he hired, Bill was a “just the facts” announcer. He reported the games. Imagine Joe Friday in Dragnet.

“Here we go. A 32-yard field goal with three seconds remaining. There’s the snap. The hold. The kick. It’s long enough. It’s high enough. It’s straight enough, and the Bears of Lenoir-Rhyne have taken a 10-9 Carolinas Conference victory over the … wait. The kick was … no good, and the Blue Hose of Presbyterian College have taken a 9-7 victory over the Bears of Lenoir-Rhyne.”

Bill’s voice never changed.

All these characters, except for Jeff Singer (as best I know), John Block and Doug Holliday, are gone now. I loved them all. Hogan sold WLBG’s powerful FM license. Its descendant is WSSL-FM. Emil Finley acquired WLBG and fought the good fight but announced this week the station was shutting down at the end of the month.

I’m sad. Another joy of my youth is passing into oblivion. The world has passed it by. I reckon I’m not far behind. We’re all carriage makers watching the streets fill with automobiles.

I hope someone sets up some internet arrangement so that Holliday and Hughes can continue to broadcast the Laurens Raiders. Most of my recent listening to WLBG was from the website, but I enjoyed taking photos of Raider baseball games, leaving early and listening to Mike and Linsey Bell on the way home.

For Real Radio 860, it stopped being real.

The latest threat to everyone’s well-being is microplastics. Our body absorbs them from drinking from plastic bottles, sucking on plastic straws and eating from plastic plates.

There is nothing we can do about it. We should’ve never stopped drinking Cokes from glass bottles and saving them for the deposit. We should’ve washed our dishes in the sinks and hung our clothes on a line in the backyard.

I haven’t seen a clothesline in a while.

That reminds me. I’ve got to go to the laundromat. My dryer’s broke down. I’m not going to be buying a new one any time soon. I’m satisfied a repairman would tell me it’d cost less to get a new one. He’d probably have one to sell me.

Don’t mind me. I get pessimistic now and then.

Buy my books. A lot of them are on Amazon. Most of them are fiction. This website satisfies my need for real life.

Crazy of Natural Causes is about a coach who is nearly killed in an automobile accident, gets religion and finds out there’s not much religion in those who preach it for money. Forgive Us Our Trespasses is a tale of small-town corruption.