"Why do they [write] for their money? Why do they [work] for short pay? They ain't getting nowhere and they're losing their share. They must have gone crazy back there." — Michael Burton (paraphrased)
By MONTE DUTTON (Monte Dutton photos) Click here. Practice makes perfect. Doesn’t it? It’s not without its hazards. Injuries happen. An ancient television show known as Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In used to hand out the “Fickle Finger of Fate.” My view is that luck intervenes only in the short term. It all evens out. Click …
Continue reading County Signs: Legends of fall begin with August work
By MONTE DUTTON (Pixabay photo) Click here. Things kids don’t do anymore because there’s so much else to do: I’ve never read about it or seen a film, but when I was in college, I discovered that almost everyone had played in their youth what I knew as ‘thump football.” Kids could play it on …
By MONTE DUTTON (Monte Dutton photos) Click here. On Friday morning, I awakened, and for about 30 minutes, thought it was Saturday. Until I made coffee, I thought I still had Sweet ‘n’ Low. The tipoff was that TCM wasn’t running a silly comedy or a crime serial. (Inexplicably, I have grown fond of old …
Continue reading County Signs: Turns out it isn’t the weekend yet
By MONTE DUTTON (Monte Dutton photos) Click here. Sensations keep us going. They keep us ambling up stadium steps long after we’re capable of running them. We remember how it feels, from a distance of decades, to lie on one’s back, the sun overhead, squinting, while raising the legs six inches … and holding them …
By MONTE DUTTON Coleman Coker (Monte Dutton photos) Click here. I heard, almost accidentally, words of a political analyst that struck me as useful for young athletes. “Hope alone will not win, but despair will lose every time.” Three American Legion Senior baseball teams have Laurens County players. All three had their playoff series stretched …
By MONTE DUTTON Click here. Friends, are you anxious every time you turn on the TV? Are you developing an emergency aversion, which is to say, an aversion to emergencies? Football starts next. What could go wrong? At the very least, athletes learn how to manage anxiety. Many even excel amidst it. I love so …
Continue reading County Signs: What we can learn from the young
By MONTE DUTTON (Monte Dutton photo) Click here. Clinton High School continues to upgrade its historic football stadium, the most apparent improvement being a combination score- and video board to replace the old one behind Wilder Stadium’s south end zone. New stands and a restroom building are being constructed on the visitors side. Until 1960, …
Continue reading County Signs: Wilder Stadium adds video scoreboard
By MONTE DUTTON Laurens head coach Greg Porter (Monte Dutton photo) Click here. In terms of organized sports, most fields are fallow as we await the opening salvos of Independence 2024. Me? I could use the time. Before long, the hills will be alive with the sound of pads popping. On the county scene, the …
By MONTE DUTTON Out at the plate (Monte Dutton photos) Click here. I did something I haven’t done since COVID. (Knock on wood.) I went to a movie. I munched popcorn in a cool arena with an enormous screen and thunderous sound. My previous movie, in the late fall of 2019, was Ford v. Ferrari. …
By MONTE DUTTON (Monte Dutton photos) Click here. American Legion baseball is a slight step back. It doesn’t have the tension of high-school ball in the spring. It’s the summer. It’s supposed to be fun. It is. I’ve made quite the transition. For years, when I was away watching fast cars, I occasionally proclaimed that …
Continue reading County Signs: To everything, there is a season
Nightrider's Lament 