I grew up with Granddaddy Dutton and Papa Davis, and Granny Dutton and Mama Davis. It was always Daddy, never Dad. Mommy was replaced by Mom at puberty. Succeeding generations have added such innovations as Pawpaw, Meemaw, and Mawmaw. I’m sure they existed somewhere, but not around here. Meemaw. It’s a modern term, at least …
Category: Life
Upon Further Review …
Until I did it occasionally a year ago and regularly this year, I hadn’t written about a high school football game in more than fifteen years. Back then, I thought myself quite the whiz kid. I could keep running accounts of the game and cumulative totals at the same time. Then I could talk to …
Customer Service
Today I hope to unify my novel. No, I’m not going to compare elements of two manuscripts and somehow integrate them. It’s just that I have thirty-eight chapters of the Forgive Us Our Trespasses manuscript in the sinews of a laptop presently located at the Best Buy in Spartanburg and chapters, well, here. I bought …
A Sticking Key
I’m grateful for this Sony laptop. It’s lasted longer than any of my previous writing apparati. The wear and tear of writing about distant events took its toll on a Dell, a Toshiba, and another brand whose name escapes me now. I’ve also been a writer – a sportswriter for most of that time – …
Try, Try Again
I’m taking a break. I’ve been working on the thirty-eighth chapter of the first draft of a novel about an evil politician and a good cop who have known each other all their lives. It’s slowed as it nears its end. When last I left Denny Frawley, he was debating the incumbent governor and this …
Peeking Outside
Man, oh, man. My life has changed. For twenty years, I flew about fifty thousand miles in each, writing about stock car races all over the country. On Friday, I will walk onto a plane for the first time since November 2012. I used to write columns. Now I write blogs. I used to write …
What’s in It for Me?
On my other blog, at montedutton.com, I struck a chord this week.I think it was a G, but it might have been an E-minor.Two weeks ago, I wrote a NASCAR blog about Dale Earnhardt Jr. About eight hundred people read it. On Sunday, I wrote a blog about the incident in upstate New York involving …
Fate and Rationalization
The Weather Channel reports that there’s an eighty percent chance of rain. One channel away, Weather Nation claims it’s forty. Today is Alexis Smith day at Turner Classic Movies. I don’t particularly want to watch Alexis Smith. Prudence calls for putting off the lawn mowing till the morrow. It’s all about me. Some days, …
Attending to the Attention
As you may know, I blog regularly at montedutton.com as well as here. For twenty years, I wrote about automobile racing for a living. The other blog is often devoted to NASCAR, as well as other sports and aspects of life I experience. I began this blog as a site for my literary endeavors: the …
Changes Ten by Ten
Fifty years ago, my father voted for and bet on Barry Goldwater, not to win the election but to carry South Carolina. He won. Goldwater lost. The election, not South Carolina. NASCAR’s greatest hero at the time, “Fireball” Roberts, was horribly burned at Charlotte Motor Speedway. He lived for more than two months, and every …
Nightrider's Lament 